1636:The Kremlin games rof-14 Page 27

  “How likely is he to trounce you this time if it comes to a shooting war?” Reverend Green wanted to know.

  “I wish I knew,” the colonel said. “The patriarch was sure that we would win before Prince Gorchakov sent his letter, and we might have been in a shooting war before now if Sigismund III had died this time around when he did in that other history. But he lasted six months more. Boyar Sheremetev was less convinced of our chances in a shooting war and remains so. At the same time, we have learned a lot from the Dacha and the Gun Shop. Even from those silly board games they are playing in the Moscow Kremlin now. Still, it will be better for all if we can reach a negotiated settlement.”

  Which was, Kseniya knew, the stance of the Sheremetevs and their supporters. None of them had any way of knowing it, but just then a young lieutenant named Timofeivich was reporting to his general in a place called Rzhev.

  Chapter 57

  August 1634

  To supplement their rations, the Streltzi with their new AK3’s went hunting between villages. Russia was sparsely populated compared to the rest of Europe and there was quite a bit of game. Captain Boyce and his sergeant were impressed with the guns. When they asked Tim about it, he called on one of the Streltzi to do a show-and-tell.

  Daniil Kinski set the butt of the AK3 on the ground and the tip of its barrel came not quite to his shoulder and Daniil Kinski was a short man. If any of them had been familiar with the up-time weaponry, they would have thought of the AK3 as the illegitimate child of a Kentucky long-rifle and a Winchester 73. Like the long-rifle, the AK3 was a flintlock, and like the Winchester it had a lever action. But the AK3 had a removable firing chamber. Daniil lifted the AK3 and showed them how the chamber was removed. He opened the lever action chamber lock and pulled out the chamber.

  “The chamber, as you can see, is a steel case, two and a half inches long including the quarter inch lip that inserts into the bore of the barrel. Behind the lip, the front of the chamber is flat and supposed to fit flush to the bottom of the barrel. It doesn’t always fit as flush as we’d like, so we made some leather gaskets.” He pulled the gasket off the chamber and showed them. “We still have the flash from the pan and the touch hole, but that’s no worse than any flintlock.”

  Daniil stuck the gasket back on the chamber, then opened the frizzen and tapped the touch hole of the chamber on the pan to prime it. He closed the frizzen, inserted the chamber in the rifle, then he pulled the lever up flush with the stock which pushed the back block forward, forcing the lip of the chamber into the barrel. Finally, he cocked, aimed, and fired.

  Crack!

  Then he opened the chamber lock, pulled the chamber out, stuck it in his pouch, primed the pan with a loaded chamber, inserted the loaded chamber with a gasket already on it into the AK3, closed the lock, aimed, and fired again.

  Crack!

  Relative to muzzle-loading a musket it was very fast. Plus, since both shots had been aimed, they had both hit the tree that was his target… some eighty yards away from where they were standing.

  Daniil pulled the second chamber from the AK3, then leaned the rifle against a tree while he showed them how to reload the chambers. Daniil filled the chamber with a measured amount of black powder then pulled out a lead cylinder. “It doesn’t use a round ball, it uses a Krackoff ball.” Which, an up-time observer would note, had a certain resemblance to a Minie ball, in that it was a cylinder with one flat end and the other rounded. But it fit snugly into the chamber.

  “Push down till the Krackoff ball is flush with or a little below the lip of the chamber,” Daniil said. The chamber had an oddly-shaped back end and Daniil showed them how it fit into the back block of the chamber lock. It was designed to fit into the AK3 only in such a way that the touch hole lined up with the flint lock on the side of the rifle. “It can be inserted into the rifle with your eyes closed and the touch hole will still line up,” Daniil told them. It was an impressive demonstration.

  A week later, while Tim and his crew were still collecting boats on the Volga, the Russian force surrounded Rzhev. In a way, General Izmailov was surprised. His force seriously outnumbered the forces in Rzhev and he had half-expected the commander of the Polish mercenary force to realize that and withdraw.

  Janusz Radziwill had considered doing just exactly that. His officers had suggested it. However, Janusz was a young man who had already thrown the dice. If he retired from the game now, things could get really difficult at home. Besides, the ease with which they had dispatched the cavalry suggested that they could hold and break the Russians against their recently built ramparts. So he allowed General Izmailov to reach the town, hoping to bait him into to another rash attack.

  General Izmailov didn’t take the bait. Instead, he surrounded the Polish encampment and started fortifying, using the golay golrod, the walking walls. Now it came down to a question of who would be reinforced first.

  “What are those things and what good are they?” Tim looked up at the badly accented Russian. It was the sergeant from the mercenaries. Ivan-no, John was the English form-John Charles Hampstead. He must not have been near Moscow during the testing. The army had been encamped around Rzhev for about five days when they arrived.

  The mercenaries of Captain Boyce’s company had done a decent, if not spectacular job. “ Golay golrod. Walking walls, you might say, or walking forts.”

  Hampstead said, “Fine. That’s what they are. What good are they?”

  A group of peasant draftees were pushing one of the golay golrod into position. Tim pointed at them. “They are made of heavy plywood. They let us build fortifications very quickly. In winter we can even put them on skis for ease of movement. Right now, of course, they’re on wheels…” Tim’s voice trailed off. He thought a moment.

  It was heavy plywood. The panels were a good three inches thick. The wheels could even be turned a little bit. And that’s what the workers were doing now. They were pushing the wall back and forth to maneuver it into a gap in the wall. Since the walls were a lot more likely to stop a bullet if it hit them at an angle, they were being set up at an angle to the city wall around Rzhev. Since the workers were filling in a gap in the wall, they were quite prudently staying behind the wall they were moving. Even if they had been in effective range of the Polish muskets-which they weren’t-all the Poles would be able to see was the wall. Not that the workers seemed convinced of that. They were peasants, not soldiers of any sort. They weren’t armed and weren’t expected to fight, but were here to carry supplies, set up camp, and other support roles.

  Tim realized that the workers were right. If they had been on the other side of the golay golrod, they would have been shot at and, if unlucky, hit. But the way they were doing it they were, if not perfectly safe, close to it. There was a narrow gap, less than half a foot, between the bottom of the wall and the ground. But to hit a target that size with the kind of muskets Hampstead and his men had, would take a lucky shot at ten yards.

  That’s when the plan began to come together. Not all at once, but in pieces. Tim could see the walls being shoved, one in front of the other… making a partial wall between their present position and Rzhev. But how would they get back? More walls. It came together in his mind. A slowly shrinking siege wall. A tightening noose around Rzhev. As the noose got tighter, the dead zone between the siege walls and the city walls would get smaller. He forgot, almost, that this was real, not a war game played at the Kremlin. Forgot, almost, that he was the most junior of aides to the general. Almost… but not quite. So it was with great humility and trepidation that he approached General Izmailov.

  The general listened. Why not? It was a siege and he had nothing else to do at the moment except for smoothing over disputes of precedence or paperwork that his secretary could do better. After due consideration, he decided that it was the beginnings of a possibly very good plan. They would have to take into account that the golay golrod were less than completely effective when hit face-on by enemy fire. So rather than a tighteni
ng noose, it would be more like a spiked collar with the spikes on the inside.

  Back in Moscow, things were not going well. The same people who would have wanted General Izmailov’s head for denying Colonel Khilhov the opportunity to rid Russia of the Polish invaders now wanted his head for “ordering” it. Calls for his removal were brought up in both the Zemsky Sobor and the Boyar Duma. Others were afraid of offending the Poles and bringing about a repeat of the events of the up-time Smolensk War by squandering resources. Still others pointed out that the size of the invasion had been grossly overestimated. The close to ten thousand men that General Izmailov had should be plenty. Between the three factions, they blocked any attempt to send reinforcements. And almost blocked resupply.

  Chapter 58

  Crack!

  Janusz Radziwill ducked behind the Rzhev city wall, cursing the Russian forces. He wasn’t happy that the Russian guns could reach farther than his. He didn’t like that the golay golrod seemed to be being used in a brand new way. Most of all he detested the flying thing.

  “I hate that cursed thing. Every time it’s up there, it’s watching every move we make and telling the Russkies just what we’re doing.”

  Colonel Millerov looked up and nodded. “I’m none too happy with it myself. I feel like I’m being watched every minute of the day. But-” He pointed. “I’m just as worried about the walls they’re pushing inwards. And what’s going to happen if the Rus get here and get in before our reinforcements get here.”

  “Help should be on his way from Smolensk.” The last messenger had arrived just days ago. He had to swim down the Volga at night and sneak up the bank. But he had reported that the Smolensk garrison was coming.

  “They need to move faster,” Millerov said. “Once those forces get here, we’ll have them between us and the relief. And there’s no way out for them.” He paused. “If they get here in time, that is.”

  “General Izmailov, sir.” Nick paused to think about his report for a moment. “A force of about eight thousand men is approaching from the southwest. From Smolensk, as near as I can tell. They’ll be here in a week.”

  The general looked grim. “Well, we knew it was inevitable.”

  He began issuing orders. “Tim, now that we’ve tightened the noose around Rzhev, we’ve got plenty of wall sections. We’ll use them to build our own fortifications between us and the oncoming force. Arrange it.”

  That wasn’t a good solution but it was the best he could do with what he had. One thing he didn’t want to allow was a relief of the siege of Rzhev. Instead his force would be both besiegers and besieged.

  “Yes, sir.” The young lieutenant-who was looking older by the day-took off toward the peasants and soldiers who were used to move the walls.

  Work on tightening the noose around Rzhev was halted while the Russians set about making their own defensive wall. To General Izmailov this was looking more and more like a carefully laid plan where someone had jumped the gun. Tim was right about the Volga, or at least he might be. If the Poles got a base on the upper Volga, they would be in a much better position to press Wladislaw’s claim to the czar’s throne. If the enemy got Rzhev and Tver and held them for a while, they could build up supplies and equipment to make a rapid advance by way of the Volga. They wouldn’t need to take Moscow, just cut it off from the rest of Russia. Besides, if they held the Volga to Nizhny Novgorodi, they held the mouth of the Muscovy River. Apparently, someone in Poland had realized that Moscow was a false key to Russia.

  It was the rivers that gave someone control of Russia, not Moscow. Especially if the Poles got their own up-timer somewhere to make them steam-powered riverboats. Russia now had some steamboats running up the Volga bringing supplies. What they weren’t bringing were reinforcements. Izmailov wondered if the people back in Moscow were crazy.

  Meanwhile, everyone was working to get a second wall up about fifty feet outside the first and to get all their supplies between the two walls. That would give them a corridor that would stretch from the river on one side of Rzhev to the river on the other side. Rzhev was located on both sides of the Volga, but a bluff on the north side of the river commanded the lower city on the south side. For now, Izmailov would cede the lower city to the Poles. He could take it back easily enough once they had the upper city in their hands. There had been a ferry between the two, but that was easily dealt with. The Volga here was a bit over a hundred yards wide, making it impossible to occupy both sides of the river without dividing his force. The good news was the volley guns and small cannons placed at either end of the corridor could prevent the Poles from resupplying Upper Rzhev by crossing the Volga. That same bluff gave the Russian guns an advantage when protecting their resupply.

  “All right, Nick. From now on you base out of Staritsa. I want you well away from Cossack patrols.” Starista was about thirty miles as the crow-or Testbed — flew, a bit over fifty miles along the river. And it had enough defenses to keep Testbed safe. “Do you really think the blinker lamps will work in daylight?”

  “They should, General. The lamp on Testbed is located in shadow, so as long as we stay out of the sun, you should be able to see the flashes. You have the grid map and we got a good enough look at their army to give a good read on their units. They have been designated A through K. We’ll send an offset for the code wheels at the beginning and end of each message.”

  “What about us sending you messages?

  “Should work about the same. Blink at us from a shaded spot.” Nick said. “What really worries me, General, is… well, they will know that we are telling you their locations. And we can’t stay up all that long. They can just wait for us to leave, then move their units and attack where you’re not expecting it.”

  “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 Radziwill 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 reporte
d 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.