Chapter 1496: Everything Is Fine
The crowd ground to a halt thirty or forty meters away, the air so thick with tension it felt as though it might snap at any moment.
"Don't be afraid! We're charging in!"
"Get out of the way, you lapdogs of the tyrant!"
"Hand the prisoners over!"
People in the crowd began picking up stones and hurling them toward the high walls. The Imperial soldiers responded instantly, raising their muskets in a disciplined, synchronized motion, aiming directly at the mass of people.
"Don't do anything reckless!" a gravelly voice rang out from the crowd. "Those men will actually fire."
Adorno turned toward the voice and saw a man in his late forties, dressed in a faded, threadbare old military uniform, limping his way through the press of bodies.
Thinking back to that scene in the café, Adorno clenched his fists. "Are we just going to abandon Mr. Steffens?"
The veteran pointed toward the cannons mounted atop the Hofburg. "We need some of those ourselves. Otherwise, no matter how many of us charge, it's just a suicide mission."
The veteran ignored him, lowering his voice as he addressed those nearby. "The Royal Armory. There are countless cannons there. I used to haul cannonballs for them; I know the layout inside out."
The petty noble interrupted him. "Don't be a fool. There are guards there, too."
"Yes, there are," the veteran said with a grim smile. "But only about a hundred of them."
The nobleman looked startled. "How could you possibly know that?"
The veteran turned to look at him. "At the end of last month, a massive convoy left Vienna. Perhaps you noticed it. It was a shipment of munitions bound for Switzerland."
"According to protocol, the armory has to send a detail to escort the shipment all the way to Klagenfurt and return only after the hand-off is complete. So, right now, there's only a single company left there, along with a few officers."
A ripple of excitement surged through the crowd. Almost immediately, they began to follow the veteran, surging toward the east side of the city.
Up on the balcony of the Hofburg, Count Reineck spoke to the officer beside him with an air of smug satisfaction. "See? Give them a little scare, and those low-born wretches scatter instantly."
If Major Latour, the Royal Armory Superintendent only two blocks away, had heard those words, he likely would have branded Reineck an idiot in his mind.
What the protesters hadn't expected was that even a hundred muskets were still a formidable threat.
When they finally saw the dark, hollow muzzles of the guns pointed at them, they instinctively faltered, their footsteps slowing to a halt.
The veteran widened his eyes and waved his arms frantically. "Everyone, charge together! They can only get off two shots at most! They won't hit more than a few of us!"
The crowd shuffled forward a few paces, then stopped again.
Adorno's ears were filled with shouts of "For liberty and equality!" or "We want a Parliament!" but in that moment, his mind held only the memory of Karen's cold, lifeless arm and the small copper pot she had cherished most.
"I've had enough!" he suddenly roared. He sprinted toward the blackened iron gates, throwing himself forward with reckless abandon right into the line of fire.
A volley of gunshots rang out immediately. Lead bullets kicked up plumes of dust around his feet, but miraculously, not a single one hit him. The logistics soldiers, who had abysmal training, were terrible marksmen.
Adorno kept his head down, his legs pumping with everything he had, a single thought repeating in his mind: 'Don't be afraid! Don't be a coward like you were that day in the café!'
Seeing him emerge unscathed, several people behind him were emboldened. They let out a cry and charged after him.
Their momentum carried the rest of the crowd.
A roar like a crashing tidal wave erupted in front of the Royal Armory. Nearly ten thousand people screamed as they swarmed the facility, pelted the defenders with a rain of stones.
Just as the veteran had predicted, the armory guards managed only two rounds before they were overcome by terror. They dropped their muskets and fled toward the rear exits.
The walls of the armory weren't particularly high—it was a warehouse, after all, not a fortress. Adorno, who was used to climbing ten-meter tree trunks at the wood factory, used both hands and feet to scale the wall in an instant. Once at the top, he reached down and hauled a young man up after him.
An hour later, the Royal Armory was packed with protesters. Cheers echoed through the courtyard.
Following the veteran's instructions, Adorno and several others worked together to pry open the heavy doors of the warehouses. Inside, they found wooden crates stacked in neat rows and a vast array of cannons, their metal surfaces gleaming with oil.
Back at the Hofburg, Count Reineck was just contemplating what to have for dinner when the clamor outside began to rise again. Irritated, he walked toward the window. "Good God, what is it now?"
The next moment, his eyes bulged. "Damn it—"
He saw three 8-pounder cannons. A mob of commoners was surrounding them, frantically tinkering with the mechanisms.
As it turned out, Adorno and the others couldn't find any suitable horses, so they had only been able to drag the 8-pounder cannons, which were the lightest ones available.
"Marek!"
Count Reineck spun around, screaming for his battalion commander, but he was answered by an earth-shattering boom.
A cannonball struck somewhere nearby, the impact making him stumble. Then came a second shot, and a third—
The Hofburg's garrison did not return fire with their own artillery.
Just as Lukas had said before, the protesters out there very likely included their own parents or brothers.
Moreover, many of them had been swayed by liberal ideology. The more the government cracked down on the liberals and banned their books and newspapers, the more curious people became. To the point where "Liberty" and "Equality" had become a sort of illicit fashion.
Finally, under the direction of a few retired soldiers, a cannonball smashed into the main gate of the Hofburg. One half of the massive metal gate was torn from its hinges like a sheet of paper, flying over ten meters through the air.
Count Reineck hadn't expected the rioters to move so quickly. By the time he gathered his personal guards to flee, it was already too late.
He reached the top of the stairs only to run head-on into dozens of armed citizens.
These people were clearly in the grip of a collective frenzy. At the mere sight of Reineck's military uniform, they opened fire wildly.
It was only after Count Reineck had been struck in the neck by a lead bullet that someone finally shouted a question: "Where is Mr. Steffens being held?"
Count Reineck could no longer hear them.
Failing to find Steffens, the crowd turned back to the Hofburg Main Hall. They hoisted their greatest trophy—Count Reineck's corpse—into the air, cheering at the top of their lungs: "The tyrant's lapdog is dead!"
"The man got what he deserved!"
"Carry him outside so everyone can see!"
As several men tried to move the body, they realized Reineck's head was barely attached by a few strands of flesh. A butcher in the crowd simply stepped forward and severed it completely.
Another tall man grabbed the head. He reached out, tore down the Habsburg flag from the landing, and impaled the head onto the flagpole.
Someone recognized Adorno and pointed at him, shouting, "This is our hero! He was the first one to charge into the armory!"
The man holding Reineck's head walked over and thrust the flagpole into Adorno's hands. "This is the glory you deserve!"
Night fell.
In the Schonbrunn Palace, Franz II sat at his desk. He glanced out the window at the quiet grounds with satisfaction—most of the protesters had moved toward the Hofburg, leaving fewer than three thousand here.
He recalled Marshal Umser's report from earlier that afternoon, stating that the Moravian Legion would enter the city by tomorrow morning at the latest. His heart felt significantly lighter.
He picked up his quill, dipped it in ink, and wrote in his diary: The 21st. Friday. Everything is fine.
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