Chapter 1043: A Decisive Leader
When more than 1,300 Cossack cavalrymen appeared on the flank and rear of the Persian Knights of Jihad with sharp, piercing howls, the outcome of the battle was already set in stone.
The Persian heavy cavalry, having just endured two rounds of full-throttle charges, were exhausted and flagging. Caught in a sudden ambush, they offered almost no resistance as their formations were sliced into several isolated pockets before they scrambled to escape in every direction.
By the following afternoon, the Persian forces trapped on the northern side of the Krtsanisi hills, leaderless and completely surrounded, finally began to surrender.
Agha Mohammad, however, had already ordered his main force to retreat at dawn.
That night, the city of Tbilisi erupted in celebration, marking the moment they and the Tsar's army had together repelled the brutal Persians.
They had good reason to celebrate. In another history, Tbilisi would have fallen by now, with every adult male slaughtered by Agha Mohammad and their eyes gouged out to be piled into pyramids outside the city walls.
But here and now, they were the victors.
At the victory banquet in the Georgian royal palace, Gudovich stood before all the nobles and officers. He first raised a toast, shouting, "Long live His Majesty the Tsar!" then abruptly added, "And thanks to our eternal friend—France!"
Meanwhile, in the temporary camp of the Persian army that had retreated south to the city of Ganja, two officers held a blood-stained tray. They bowed low to Agha Mohammad and reported, "Great Shah, the execution is complete."
Those were the eyes of Bozorg. Although he was one of Agha Mohammad's most valiant generals, he had failed to break the Russian lines and had returned alive.
For that, he had to face military law.
Agha Mohammad turned to a nearby commander of the Turkic cavalry. "Have you clarified the situation with the Russians?"
"Not yet, Your Majesty..." The officer wiped cold sweat from his brow and hurriedly added, "However, it is confirmed that they have at least twenty thousand men and are equipped with a massive amount of artillery. They clearly did not just arrive."
Agha Mohammad's expression grew darker. He swept all the flags off the recently prepared sand table and said in a low voice, "Order the entire army to retreat to Tabriz tomorrow morning."
He had spent his life on the battlefield and never accepted defeat lightly, but in just two days, his army had lost over thirteen thousand men, and his most elite force, the Knights of Jihad, had been nearly wiped out.
Though he still had twenty-six thousand men under his command, the formidable combat power the Russian army displayed today forced him to be cautious.
As an ambitious leader, he did not lack decisiveness.
Tabriz was four hundred kilometers south of Tbilisi. His command did not just mean giving up the struggle for Transcaucasia; it meant abandoning Armenia as well.
But Tabriz possessed a formidable fortress. He could stop the Russian army there and gather his strength for a counterattack.
Over the following month, Valerian Zubov led his army in a triumphant advance, seizing over a hundred thousand square kilometers of territory. He only halted when he reached the gates of the Tabriz fortress.
Subsequently, envoys from all the Transcaucasian states, including Georgia, as well as Armenia and Karabakh, arrived in Saint Petersburg to declare their willingness to become protectorates of Russia.
***
In the French province of Liège, within the Southern Netherlands.
Inside the workshop of the Namur Royal Ironworks, Joseph flipped through the technical data compiled over the recent period. He patiently instructed the chief technician, Vendel:
"Do not worry about the waste. The amounts of manganese and nickel must be constantly adjusted and tested in increments of 0.01 percent."
"Yes, Your Highness," Vendel replied with a solemn nod.
He had originally assumed the Crown Prince was merely visiting to inspect the progress of the Bessemer process research. He hadn't expected His Highness to be even more concerned with the technicians' mastery of metallurgical theory.
Fortunately, they had already repeatedly studied His Highness's manuscript on the Principles of Steelmaking. Concepts like desulfurization, desiliconization, lining erosion, and the prevention of phosphorus reversion were all etched into their minds.
Of course, the most brilliant part of that manuscript was the explanation of the crystal lattice structure.
His Highness had pioneered the theory that during the steelmaking process, carbon and iron elements form specific spatial structures, which drastically influence the properties of the steel.
In the past, these technicians knew that carbon content made steel harder or more brittle, and that products required quenching and tempering, but the underlying scientific reasons remained a mystery until they read the manuscript.
This allowed them to shift from a reliance on mere experience to a model guided by scientific theory when designing industrial processes.
In truth, Joseph had only explained the general principles—even he didn't know the finer details—but for top-tier technicians, that was the most difficult step on the road to innovation.
As long as someone pointed them in the right direction, the rest was simply a matter of refining the technology through extensive experimentation.
It was after receiving the Principles of Steelmaking that the quality of steel at the Namur Royal Ironworks saw a marked improvement.
And now, the Crown Prince had brought them a new metallurgical frontier: the principles of alloy steel.
This technology was so vital that Joseph had chosen not to include it in his written manuscript, opting instead to dictate it directly to the core technical staff.
The Namur Royal Ironworks was entirely owned by the French government, with every critical post occupied by members of the Royal Guard and the Intelligence Bureau.
Joseph had actually learned from Le Roy, the President of the French Academy of Sciences, just last year that forty years ago, the Swede Axel Cronstedt had used carbon reduction to isolate metallic nickel from niccolite.
Twenty years ago, it was another Swede using the same method who obtained metallic manganese from pyrolusite.
While these laboratory methods only produced tiny amounts of nickel and manganese, fortunately, the amounts needed for steelmaking were also small, allowing Joseph to begin his plans for alloy steel.
Manganese steel, nickel steel, and ordinary steel were practically different substances altogether!
He knew, however, that the exact proportions of manganese and nickel, the timing of their addition, and the adjustments to the smelting process would require countless experiments to finalize.
Thus, he took the opportunity of this inspection to set Vendel to work on the production of alloy steel.
In reality, Joseph hadn't wanted to distract Vendel, who was still responsible for developing the converter steelmaking process.
But after confirming that converter technology was still quite a way from being realized, he decided it was better to pursue two paths simultaneously.
The research at the United Steam Engine Company had hit a bottleneck—the 100-horsepower steam engines had suffered several consecutive pipeline ruptures.
One solution was to improve the control of boiler pressure, but the other was simply to increase the strength of the steel itself.
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