While the locals were desperately calling upon Allah, the Imperial military commanders wore troubled expressions.
“Cleaning up will be a problem.”
What troubled them were the abundant corpses before their eyes.
“The battle seems to have taken about two hours, but cleaning up will take at least two days.”
“And that’s only possible if we borrow manpower from the construction site.”
The commanders, disheartened at the thought of clearing the corpses strewn everywhere, frowned at the expressions of the soldiers standing nearby.
“What’s wrong with you all?”
“Anyone looking at you would think you’re the corpses.”
“N-nothing… bleeugh!”
“S-sorry… bleeugh!”
The Imperial soldiers, with faces as pale as the corpses scattered across the desert, couldn’t even answer properly and began vomiting. When one or two started vomiting, nearby soldiers also leaned their heads outside the flatcar and began to throw up.
“Bleeeugh!”
“Bleurgh!”
Watching the soldiers vomit until yellow gastric juice came out, the commanders shook their heads.
“Goodness, vomiting just from seeing corpses, they’re too delicate…”
At the young commanders’ complaints, the veteran commanders behind them smirked and commented.
“You all did the same at Liaodong.”
“As they say, the frog forgets its time as a tadpole…”
At the veterans’ scolding, the young commanders looked embarrassed.
The veteran commanders who were scolding the young commanders seemed to understand the soldiers’ reactions.
“When we were young, seeing corpses wasn’t unfamiliar, but it seems to have become quite strange for today’s youth.”
“I agree. The saying ‘blue sea becomes mulberry field’ truly resonates.”
***
As the veteran commanders mentioned, the presence of death had significantly diminished in Imperials’ daily lives.
During the late Goryeo and early Joseon periods, frequent invasions by Japanese pirates resulted in corpses and displaced people overflowing everywhere.
Even when Sejong ascended the throne, thousands of starvation deaths were reported to the court annually due to frequent poor harvests. Additionally, whenever an epidemic struck, many people commonly died untimely deaths.
Therefore, those who spent their childhood during this period were accustomed to death and corpses.
However, as Great Reformation succeeded, such tragic events began to disappear.
Starvation deaths began to decrease with the active implementation of policies such as expanding and maintaining irrigation facilities, encouraging displaced people to settle, and importing grain.
At the same time, epidemics gradually decreased as basic hygiene practices like bathing were promoted and public health and healthcare were boldly supported.
As conditions improved, death gradually distanced from the daily lives of Joseon people at that time.
The same was true for soldiers.
Large-scale bloodshed like the Gyu Rebellion and Möngke Temür’s Rebellion disappeared, and the northeastern region stabilized as the Jurchen tribes submitted, significantly reducing instances of bloodshed.
Of course, there were many instances of witnessing blood and corpses while fighting pirates at sea, but this didn’t resonate with ordinary people and soldiers.
And so, soldiers who had gradually become accustomed to peace became re-familiarized with blood and death through the First Joseon-Ming War.
However, now that more than ten years had passed since Joseon became the Empire, blood and corpses had once again become unfamiliar to young soldiers.
As a result, once the excitement of battle subsided, vomiting occurred everywhere.
***
“It’s understandable, but it’s still a problem. They’ve had almost no actual combat experience.”
“Even if they’ve been in combat, it was mainly naval.”
The senior officers discussed with serious expressions.
Ten years ago, the junior officers who experienced the First Joseon-Ming War, especially the hell of the Yalu River defense, were now middle-ranking officers. The junior officers and soldiers who should assist them and take responsibility for the Imperial army’s future were now vomiting and becoming objects of ridicule from their superiors.
“Indeed, only actual combat experience is the answer… but we can’t engage in unnecessary battles either…”
“I agree.”
The senior commanders had headaches as they deeply felt the importance of combat experience but had no way to address it.
After pondering briefly, the senior commanders’ choice was to ‘pass the buck.’
“Let’s send a report to Seoul. Seoul will find an answer.”
“Let’s do that. The urgent matter now is to clean up this mess.”
***
Anyway, as soon as the battle ended, the Imperial forces, mobilizing even laborers, began clearing the battlefield.
First, Imperial soldiers searched the bodies of the dead Mamluk cavalry for documents, valuable items, guns, and gunpowder.
They didn’t just search the cavalrymen’s bodies. The saddles on the horses that carried the Mamluk cavalry were adorned with various decorations made of gold and silver, and the soldiers also gathered all these saddles and piled them in one place.
After the soldiers who collected what was needed left, the laborers took over the next task.
“Yalla! Yalla! (Hurry! Hurry!)”
Under the urging of the Imperials in charge of construction, the laborers lifted the bodies of people and horses strewn on the ground and loaded them onto carts.
“Heave! Heave!”
“Neeeigh!”
“Moooo.”
Carts pulled by oxen, horses, and donkeys headed to a place far from the construction site.
“Bury them next to the railway? Ghosts will haunt us…”
The construction supervisors, feeling somewhat creepy, chose a burial site quite far away.
At the destination of these carts, Imperial excavators had already dug large, deep pits.
When the carts arrived, laborers waiting in front of the pits unloaded the bodies from the carts and threw them into the pits.
***
Despite mobilizing laborers who had been involved in construction, clearing the battlefield consumed two days.
The time-consuming process was due to searching the bodies and recovering the fragmented remains of those hit by flying thundercrash mines.
As a result, at night, they had to set bonfires all around and stand guard to prevent animals from approaching.
Once the cleanup was completed with excavators dumping soil to cover the pits, the Imperial soldiers and laborers boarded the train again.
“Let’s go back!”
***
The Imperial forces that arrived in Suez moved busily.
They unloaded the weapons used in battle and moved them into the fortress, along with the wounded and the fallen.
Meanwhile, alliance military commanders were watching the scene from nearby.
“The damage seems less than expected.”
“Perhaps the size of the attacking bandits was small.”
The alliance military commanders, who had expected a small-scale battle due to the less-than-expected Imperial casualties, were wide-eyed at the enormous amount of spoils being unloaded from another wagon.
“Just how many were there?”
Watching the endless unloading of saddles, ornate sabers, and matchlock guns, the commanders soon reached the same conclusion.
“At least 1,000…”
“Over 1,000 cavalry were defeated by just 300? And in open terrain?”
The alliance military commanders, astonished at the result that defied their common sense, soon had the same thought.
‘Could it be? That Type C fire cart?’
***
That night, the soldiers who had been disguised as laborers returned.
“Well done. So, did you confirm the Imperial forces’ combat power?”
“Yes.”
“How does it compare to our forces?”
To the alliance military commanders’ questions, the soldiers answered in unison.
“The Imperial forces must never be turned into enemies.”
“To face Imperial forces that have completed defensive preparations, we would need to deploy at least 10 times, no, 20 times the troops.”
At the soldiers’ answers, the alliance military commanders showed disbelieving expressions.
“Having used them ourselves, we know Imperial weapons are powerful. But 20 times the troops? Are you sure you confirmed this correctly?”
“I saw it clearly with my own eyes! The Imperial forces, with just 300, completely annihilated nearly 2,000 enemies!”
The soldiers told the alliance military commanders everything they had secretly observed.
“…I can swear in the name of God that everything I’ve told you is true.”
When even the Ottoman soldier who was Muslim swore along with the Christians, the alliance military commanders’ faces turned black.
—Though only 1/5 the size of Type B fire carts, they had a faster firing rate.
—Unlike Type B fire carts which require at least five people to operate, these need only two.
To these advantages, the Imperial forces added quantity.
On flatcars with thick defensive sandbags, loading Type B fire carts would allow at most 3 guns on each side for a total of 6 guns per car.
This was due to the size of the fire cart itself, the number of operating personnel, and the storage space of the ammunition box.
With such an arrangement, the number of fire carts available during battle would be 3.
However, the Imperial forces built a position one level higher in the center of the flatcar and placed 8 Type C fire carts there.
Since they were positioned in a space one level higher in the center, all 8 guns could be used regardless of whether enemies came from the left or right.
In the end, 24 Type C fire carts in total, 8 each at the front, middle, and rear, poured cross-fire onto the Mamluk cavalry.
The problem wasn’t just the Type C fire carts.
The Type C long rifle used by the Imperial forces was also a fearsome weapon.
The Imperial-made Type B long rifle introduced and used in the late Suez War had already provided overwhelming firepower.
While the musketeers of the Mamluks and Spain had to stand to reload, alliance forces could lie prone or kneel to reload.
The firing rate was also superior. The Type B long rifle, a breech-loading single-shot gun, guaranteed an overwhelming firing rate compared to the muzzle-loading matchlocks and flintlocks used by the Mamluk and Spanish forces.
Because of this, the alliance countries were now putting all their efforts into attempting to replicate the Type B long rifle.
But now the Empire had introduced the Type C long rifle that surpassed the Type B.
—A long rifle that loads and uses five shots at once.
According to the soldiers’ reports, it had advantages and disadvantages compared to the Type B long rifle.
The advantage was a faster firing rate, and the disadvantage was a significantly increased ammunition consumption.
“It’s not just the long rifle…”
Type C long rifles and Type C fire carts boasted overwhelming firing rates compared to Type B.
In other words, ammunition consumption also increased significantly compared to Type B.
Having thought this far, all alliance military commanders had the same question.
‘Even if we could import them, could my country handle the supply?’
The alliance military commanders felt a chill down their spines as they thought that far.
‘The Empire can do it?’
Finally, the French military commander muttered involuntarily.
“These crazy Imperial bastards…”
Following the French military commander’s words, the Florentine military commander added.
“If we clash with the Empire, we’d go bankrupt faster than we’d lose in battle.”
Though facing grim reality, the alliance military commanders conveyed the soldiers’ reports to the envoys along with the opinion that it would be good to introduce them.
And the envoys who heard the commanders’ story also had unhappy expressions.
“So it’s a problem whether we have them or not…”