Tyranny of Steel

Admiral Reitz Bettinger stood on the bow of his Ironclad frigate. The rain was pouring heavily upon the Mediterranean sea, and the German fleet was caught in the middle of a giant storm. However, the young Admiral was unconcerned with the weather, instead he had a single goal in mind. 

Reitz was a man who was among the first members of the Austrian Navy, which over the years had since transformed into the Imperial German Navy, also referred to as the Kriegsmarine. He was considered a protégé by many and had trained under the tutelage of the previous Grand Admiral. 

While the heavens cried upon the seas, perhaps in an act of grief for what would soon occur; Reitz gazed through his binoculars into the distance, where saw his target rapidly approaching. The poor souls who would drown in the salty sea on this miserable day were the crusaders who stood on board the Catholic Armada.

Currently, Reitz's fleet is composed of merely ten vessels. Yet these ten ships were all ironclad frigates, and they had been lying in wait for days on the Coast of Naples waiting to intercept the Crusaders who dared to land in Southern Italy in an attempt to halt the Kaiser's advance into Rome. 

Reitz simply stood in the downpour of rain as he patiently watched the enemy ships enter into his firing line. The moment the catholic Armada crossed a distance of thirteen kilometers, he gave the command to initiate the attack. 

"Hard to starboard!"

With this said and a spin of the wheel, the German fleet rapidly transitioned so that their vessels were facing the enemy with their broadside guns. The next generation of vessels, which were currently being developed by the German Shipyards in Trieste, Malta, and the Baltic, would soon replace this primitive system of mounting guns on ships. However, for now, the broadside method was the best option the Kriegsmarine had available to it. 

After swinging the ships so their sides could face the enemy, the order to open fire was given. In that moment, two hundred and twenty cannons fired in unison towards the direction of the Catholic Armada.

The poor souls onboard that Catholic ship could only gaze in horror as the high explosive shells barreled down towards them from the sky. However, their misery did not last long. Once the shells impacted, the explosive force ripped apart the entire vessel, claiming the lives of everyone on board. 

Reitz gazed through his binocular and smiled after hearing the detonation. He stood silently as he witnessed the fiery blaze of the enemy vessels as it consumed the lives of all who manned them. After the first line of Catholic ships were blasted apart, the remainder split into a loose formation, hoping that the Germans would have a harder time hitting them. 

The ships used by the Germans were hardly modern vessels; they were completely lacking in computers and targeting arrays. Each gun had to be loaded and aimed by a crew. This meant there was a much larger margin of error when the shells were fired towards the enemy. 

However, was survival so easy? While plenty of shells missed their mark, the Germans had an overwhelming number of cannons to fire. They could reload each gun and fire again after a mere two seconds. With this overwhelming barrage of explosive fire, the Catholic ships were picked off one by one, regardless of their loose formation. 

The shells who missed their targets sank into the Mediterranean and exploded within its depths. The sheer loss of marine life from these attacks was incalculable. However, the Germans did not care, and fired as many shells as they could at the enemy vessels, which desperately struggled to get past the German fleet and make their way to the southern Italian shores. 

The guns onboard the Frigates continued to load and fire in a stream of barrages that lit the Mediterranean ablaze, or so it would appear from the shoreline, because it quickly engulfed hundreds of vessels in flames, and sent them to the depths of the sea. 

Despite the furious onslaught, there was only so much that the ten German vessels could do. After all, the enemy ships numbered in the hundreds, and despite the overwhelming amount of rifled breechloading cannons that the Germans possessed. They simply could not sink every vessel. Thus, a sizeable percentage of the ships passed by the German fleet, sighing in relief as they foolishly believed the battle was over. 

On board the vessel which belonged to King Andrzej Jagiellon, the Polish monarch immediately cried out blasphemy as he sighed in relief. He truly believed the worst was behind him, and he would soon be safe on the beach, far away from the German fleet. 

"Oh, merciful Poseidon, thank you for sparing this wayward mariner!"

A nearby crusader immediately looked at the Polish King with a sense of disdain, forcing the man to defend himself. 

"What? It was a joke!"

The crusader merely scoffed. He was about to chew out Andrzej when the sound of thunder crackled in the air. The two men practically soiled themselves when they realized the German fleet had just destroyed the vessel nearest to them. The Polish King could only curse out to the sky for its lack of mercy.

"Curse you merciful poseidon!"

While the Catholic fleet may have passed through the broadside guns on the right side of the German Vessels, they had unknowingly sailed into the range of the other half of the German Fleet's firepower. Where the German sailors ruthlessly opened fire on the Catholic forces who continued to press on towards the Italian shore. 

King Andrzej Jagiellon could hardly believe his sight as shells landed left and right, with every barrage at least one Catholic ship was shredded apart by the explosive blast. While the men onboard the surviving vessels turned pale with fright. They simply did not have the means to stop the German attack. 

One by one, the remaining Catholic vessels were blasted apart, until finally only a dozen ships remained. However, they had successfully gone beyond the range of the German guns, and thus they had finally made it to safety. Andrzej immediately fell to his knees as his ship hit the shore. The catholics were so fearful of the German pursuit that they completely beached their vessels, not willing to take the time necessary to properly anchor them in the bay. 

Out of the hundreds of ships that the crusaders had embarked towards Italy upon, roughly a dozen survived. Andrzej was not the only one whose stomach was unsettled. Plenty of men dived onto the beach, where they hurled up the contents of their stomach onto its sandy shores. They could hardly believe they had survived the German attack. If the German Navy had such a monumental advantage, just what would they be facing when they finally met the German Army in the field? 

After all, the Germans were most well known for their land warfare capabilities. If they had advanced so far ahead of the rest of the world with their navy, then it was simply unimaginable the ability that the German Army had.

Upon thinking about this dread, Andrzej realized that there was simply no hope of victory, and because of that, he intended to take what little remained of his army, and go back to Poland where he planned to be a good and obedient King towards his German neighbors. He could not help but voice the thoughts in his head. 

"I surrender... You hear me Berengar! Poland surrenders!"

The Polish Knights and Men at arms stiffened in their spots when they saw how defeated their King was. Hundreds of thousands of Polish Men had embarked on the Crusade to the Holy Land, under the orders of their King.

Why would they do such a thing? Because they were promised vengeance against Germany after the Byzantines were defeated. Now, maybe a thousand of those men stood upon this shore. As for the rest of his army, they were either buried in the desert, drowned in the Mediterranean, or scattered to the winds, with no hopes of returning home. 

However, before King Andrzej Jagiellon had any chance of returning home, his throat was slit from behind by a dagger. The icy gaze of the Duke of Burgundy penetrated the souls of the Polish soldiers as he stood fearlessly surrounded by his knights while spitting upon the corpse of the man he had just killed.

"Fucking traitor! Any man here who even thinks of surrendering, after everything we have lost, will suffer the same fate as this fool. I don't care about your rank and title. Today we all stand together and march north to defeat the German Army, or die trying. We can not allow the Holy See to be sacked by these barbarians!"

The various forces of the other realms quickly surrounded the Polish Knights and Men At Arms. They had no chance of avenging their King, and ultimately they were compelled under threat of death to march against the German Army.