Ch 115: The Iron Mine
A day later, news of the capture of Edinburgh reached Stirling, and Vig was in high spirits.
On July 10th, one thousand reinforcements sent by Shrike arrived, expanding the siege force to four thousand five hundred, with a large number of shield carts, siege ladders, and fifteen small catapults.
The next morning, the general assault officially began. Catapults continuously threw oil jars for a full twenty rounds. Large-scale burning appeared on the north side wall of Stirling, and the soldiers originally stationed behind the battlements spontaneously retreated.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, many Vikings slowly pushed forward with shield carts, throwing earth bags into the moat outside the walls, eventually creating more than a dozen passable roads.
Seeing this, Vig waved a red flag, and the towers at the front of the troops began to move. Because Stirling’s walls were only five meters high, the construction difficulty of the towers was greatly reduced, and their speed also increased significantly.
As time passed, the flames gradually died down, and the garrison returned to the walls, shooting at the enemy from behind the damaged battlements.
To cover the advance of the towers, eight hundred archers formed three ranks in the open space. The front rank was iron-armored crossbowmen, who were only fifty meters from the walls. Their bolts were accurate and deadly.
The second rank was ordinary light crossbowmen. They used a giant wooden shield for cover, repeatedly repeating the process of stringing, aiming, and triggering.
The last rank was Welsh longbowmen. These men had the fastest shooting speed and the longest range, providing covering fire towards the walls.
Thanks to the suppression of the archers, a large number of infantry pushed the towers close to the walls. With a loud bang, the ramp of the tower fell, and the soldiers inside rushed onto the walls to engage in fierce melee combat with the garrison.
From Vig’s perspective, the friendly heavy infantry had a clear advantage, quickly clearing the surrounding enemies, except for the city gate area, which suffered setbacks.
“Is Duncan the commander of those Indigo Raiders?”
“It seems to be him,” the next moment, Joren requested to go into battle, swearing to personally cut off the other man’s head, so as not to be overshadowed by the newly rising Torger.
“There’s no need for that.”
Vig shook his head and sent someone to inform the archers at the front lines to focus their shooting on the hundred or so elite soldiers led by Duncan.
After several volleys, the section of fortifications where Duncan was located was filled with arrows, and the Indigo Raiders suffered heavy casualties. Even Duncan himself was shot in the shoulder by a heavy crossbow bolt. A large number of Viking warriors surged forward and hacked him to death.
With the lord and a number of elite soldiers killed, the fall of Stirling Town was a foregone conclusion. Vig yawned, sat on the grassland, and dealt with documents.
According to letters from Tyne, another thousand raiders had recently arrived. In the letter, Herigifu relayed the complaints of the chieftains:
West Francia is no longer suitable for raiding. Gunnar, in order to please the Franks, actually sent soldiers to build fortresses on Jersey and Guernsey in the Channel Islands to prevent passing pirates from resting and obtaining fresh water on the islands. It’s simply leaving people no way to live.
Besides the Anglo-Saxon lands and West Francia, the raiders had nowhere to go. Just so happens that the Serpent of the North was carrying out a large-scale conquest, so they came to earn some extra money.
Taking out paper and pen, Vig wrote a reply, urging a new batch of grain and supplies.
In addition, after two major battles, the cavalry, wearing iron armor, did not suffer too many casualties, but sixty-five warhorses were lost. According to the employment agreement, if the cavalry loses mounts during wartime, Tyne must provide a new, high-quality warhorse free of charge.
“There are a total of one hundred and sixty Frankish warhorses in the western city riding school. Sixty-five are gone without a second thought. Sigh, war is just burning money.”
Even so, Vig still fulfilled his promise. There was no need to destroy his many years of accumulated reputation for such a small profit.
After spending two hours dealing with various accumulated letters, he raised his head and saw teams of dejected Pict prisoners walking out of the city gate, squatting in the open space, awaiting the victor’s disposal.
“Busy for over a month, it’s finally over.”
Vig stretched, left the follow-up tasks to his subordinates, and found a local guide to lead him to the iron mining area on the north side.
Crossing the River Forth, the northern coast was a large expanse of rolling mountains containing shallow layers of reddish-brown hematite（FeO）. Under the guidance of a mine slave, the group arrived at a nearby mining area.
“Sir, this is where I work.”
The mine slave, Kesso, pointed to a pile of stone hammers and wooden crowbars, introducing the iron ore mining process.
First, miners search for veins by observing iron-rust-colored rock layers on the surface or iron sand in streams, divided into hematite and bog iron ore on the edge of swamps.
Bog iron ore produces iron of poor quality and low toughness. Generally, mine owners prefer to mine hematite.
After marking out the mining area, miners mine iron ore in the open air, using heavy stone hammers to crush the ore and remove some impurities.
The next step is smelting. Miners use clay and stones to build a man-high cylindrical furnace, with an opening at the top for charging and an air vent at the bottom.
The mine slave Kesso pointed to the abandoned, broken cylindrical furnaces, “Layers of charcoal and iron ore are laid, three pieces of charcoal to one piece of iron ore, and then the charcoal is ignited. Air is blown in from the bottom air vent using leather bellows for a whole day.”
Vig asked the most important question, “What is the production quota?”
Kesso looked around, finally finding a rusty iron ingot from the storehouse, “About the same size as this.”
Weighing the iron ingot, approximately ten kilograms, Vig scratched his head, very dissatisfied with the production quota.
Recalling the production process mentioned by Kesso, he decided to improve it to increase production efficiency and iron ingot quality.
Regarding the ore crushing stage, he designed a hydraulic ore crusher. In short, it uses water power to drive a water wheel to lift a forging hammer, which then falls heavily, crushing the ore into small pieces, reducing the workload of the miners.
“Look, this is the blueprint for the ore crusher. I plan to build it on the River Forth bank. Additionally, I also plan to build a hydraulic blower. Compared to manually pulling leather bellows, it provides a more abundant wind power, and the size of the iron furnace can also be appropriately increased.”
Vig enthusiastically explained, appointing this clever and lucky mine slave as the superintendent of the Stirling iron mine.
“Work hard, from now on I’ll look after you. If you encounter trouble, just use my name.”
To increase the enthusiasm of the original mine slaves, Vig pardoned this group, making them paid laborers, and giving them additional rewards such as drinks and silver coins based on their production quota.
After spending several days, he visited the surrounding mining areas, and had people build a water mill on the River Forth bank, determined to build it into a large ironworking base.
Another week passed, and the thousand raiders from Tyne arrived, and the number of Vikings in Stirling’s army exceeded five thousand.
Leaving hundreds of men to guard Stirling, Vig led four thousand five hundred men to Glasgow on the west coast to capture this last large settlement.