Chapter 387 The Stalemate in the South
With the arrival of the tenth month of 1993 in the Holy Calendar, winter began to enter most areas of the Aldo Kingdom, including the royal capital Jingyao.
“This rebellion must be put down this year!”
In the camp of the kingdom’s army, Princess Catherine said this to her generals with a solemn expression.
The generals around her all nodded solemnly.
From the spring of 1990 to now, the rebellion has been going on for nearly three years, and the kingdom can no longer afford it.
The end of the year is not far away. After winter, the supply of food and grass will become increasingly difficult, which also means that the decisive battle is just around the corner.
They have already agreed on a date for battle with their opponent, the Giles Rebels.
The "fight" was proposed by the rebels, and the kingdom also agreed.
It’s not that the two sides pay much attention to the spirit of chivalry. In the past year, the two sides have definitely cheated on each other a lot. They used detours, sneak attacks, feints... all the methods that can be used in war.
The battle line alternated between south and north. It was like a tug-of-war on both sides, trying their best to win over the other side. However, they always returned to the Fugere area.
When both sides are exhausted, it is natural for them to put their last effort into a final battle.
For the final battle, many generals of the kingdom’s army were still a little nervous at first, because in early autumn, Duke Veblen—the largest lord in the east of the kingdom—finally took action and officially sent troops to join. Giles' Rebels.
This old fox, when Grand Duke Tanlang launched the rebellion, did not stand up and clearly support the royal family like other lords. He only sent an envoy to request a marriage with the royal family. After the royal family agreed, he regretted it first. Then he made a remark like "Giles possesses a certain degree of morality" - this was simply a slap in the face to His Majesty the King.
The problem is that after he expressed his support for Giles, he only stayed in his own territory and did not send a single soldier to support Giles. Duke Veblen was an unpredictable and capricious person, and people would not be surprised if one day he expressed his loyalty to the royal family again.
However, he does have capricious capital. The territory of the Veblen family is located in the large basin on the eastern border of the kingdom. It is surrounded by high mountains and mountains, making it easy to defend but difficult to attack. If you send troops to guard a dangerous place, outsiders will pay a considerable price if they try to break in.
At the beginning, Veblen wanted to echo Giles in the north and south. He sent troops to attack the territories loyal to the royal family in the east of the kingdom. As a result, the troops in the east may be good at defense but not good at offense. , in front of the first fortress they encountered, they clearly had an absolute advantage in military strength, but they suffered a bloody blow and made a lot of jokes.
Because of the terrain blocked by the mountains in the eastern basin, it is difficult to enter and difficult to get out, and supply transportation is very difficult. The frustrated Duke Veblen had no choice but to send troops to the south to join forces with Giles' rebels.
This has put considerable pressure on the kingdom's army. Fortunately, since this year, the equipment level of the kingdom's army has been greatly improved, which has prevented the balance of the war from tilting towards the rebels. The improvement of equipment is due to the royal government's large-scale procurement in the northwest bay. Since the establishment of "Northwest Industry", weapons production in the Northwest Gulf has grown by leaps and bounds. Because of the revolutionary breakthrough in iron smelting technology, the blast furnace iron plants built in Alda, Bairding, and Emden successively provided a steady stream of iron ingots for weapons workshops of all sizes. The craftsmen inside worked in shifts. The sound of clanging iron continued day and night. Swords, spears, arrows, and armor were gathered from various territories to Fulan Port. They were then loaded onto ships along with other procurement materials of the royal government such as grain, cans, cloth, or ready-made clothes, and transported to the south. The ports under the direct control of the royal government were finally transported to the front line to arm batches of new soldiers or replace the old and damaged equipment of veterans.
Stimulated by a large number of orders, Alda-style factories have appeared in other territories in the Northwest Gulf. The interests have prompted people to actively seek all methods to increase production.
Weapons suppliers in other places are very eye-catching, but there is no way. Under the same quality, weapons from the Northwest Gulf are always the cheapest, so the royal government always gives priority to placing orders with Northwest Industries.
Under such impact, weapons manufacturers in other places were forced to take a high-end route - abandoning the production of ordinary iron armor, focusing on the production of plate armor, and selling it to knight lords and generals of all sizes.
Different from ordinary iron armor, which is mainly made of wrought iron and is equipped for big-headed soldiers, plate armor is made of steel plates, and the time it takes is extremely different. A 26-person workshop can complete the work within 5 months. It can process nearly 1,600 sets of armor, but a full set of high-end and high-quality plate armor takes less than half a year to polish, which is very time-consuming from beginning to end. Especially the splicing of small pieces such as gloves requires pure manual polishing. The requirements for error are also very high, otherwise it is likely to cause inconvenience to the operator.
With the general level of craftsmanship of the craftsmen in the Northwest Gulf, it is still not possible to produce such high-end goods with a surface so smooth that a human figure can be reflected, and which can be called a work of art in all aspects, but it has been achieved in terms of low-end armor. An actual monopoly.
With the help of cheap but guaranteed quality and quantity of ordnance supplies, the kingdom has built a huge army. Currently, the number of troops confronting the rebels in the south reaches more than 70,000, of which nearly 50,000 are available for front-line combat.
Katherine and her generals attach great importance to the protection of lower-level soldiers. The better the protection of soldiers, the higher their survival rate. The combat experience of veterans who have experienced life and death battles is valuable.
Other generals were angry that such a powerful force should have been able to crush the rebels, but the war did not go so smoothly.
The joining of Veblen was not the main reason. What really caused them a headache was a mysterious army among the rebels. In the mouths of the prisoners, this rebel army was called the "Undead Army".
Just like its name, this army has exactly 6,000 men every time it appears on the battlefield, no more and no less. No matter how many were lost in the last battle, it will be the same in the next battle. There were always exactly 6,000 people present, as if no one had died.
Of course, no one thinks that they are really immortal or can come back to life. What makes everyone wonder is how the other party can replenish it quickly, because the soldiers of this army are so different - they are extremely powerful and harmless. Not being afraid of death cannot be replaced by ordinary soldiers who eat black bread and rarely eat meat for a few days of training.
What is even more exaggerated is that according to the records on the battlefield, these guys behaved extremely brutally on the battlefield. Some soldiers even witnessed the horrific scene of them tearing the flesh and blood of the people they fought. They were simply a group of people who obeyed the command. beast.
Fortunately, compared to this special force, the other rebel troops are not so scary. Only elite troops can wear iron armor, and ordinary troops can only wear leather armor. As for the cannon fodder they just brought in, There is not even a piece of decent armor, which is far different from the large amount of armor equipped by the Kingdom's army.
The so-called "Undead Army", after much deliberation, can only be attributed to the "Rebel Wizard" that has been spread in the military camp.
(End of this chapter)