Black Iron’s Glory

Chapter 359: General Van Snick

In the blink of an eye was April 588, more than a year passed since the Battle of Bering Ghana. For the winners and losers of this battle, much has changed on both sides in more than a year. It had a very important and far-reaching impact on the situation ahead and on the colonial war that had taken place on the Nubian continent.

For example, the defeated side of the Kingdom of Hicks not only denied entry to the Kingdom's envoy, who had come with the will to negotiate a truce peace, but also offered to reconstitute 10 standing regiments to bring the colonial war to an end. At the same time, they employ a combined fleet of the Kingdom of Nasseri and the Principality of Kanas, as well as two so-called voluntary mercenary regiments composed of retired veterans of the two countries, successfully preserving the colonial county of Vibato, which has an excellent military port...

On the side of the victor, the kingdom of Ovilas, the situation in the country was somewhat chaotic due to the chronic illness of old King Sterling X. In order to be able to effectively control the Ranger Corps, a powerful Royal Kingsguard, avoid General Michelchi's excessive prestige in the Ranger Corps leading the Ranger Corps to obey only his orders. The Sterling Royal Family has chosen many of its royal relatives to serve in the Rangers in order to effectively control the Royal Close Guard.

Just like General Van Snick, head of the Legion's Logistics Department, who came to power after the entire Battle of Bering Ghana, came from the side branch of the Sterling Royal Family. His grandfather is said to be Sterling VIII's cousin and to have his own territory and a hereditary Earl.

But after the war between the Kingdom of the Revival of Sterling IX and the nobles of those territories, the Count of the Royal Family stood opposite Sterling IX because of his territory. As a result, the defeated territory was confiscated because its name and royal lineage were fortunate enough to preserve a life, but the hereditary Count was lost and downgraded to the Viscount of Honor. Every year, the Viscount of Honor receives an annuity of more than 200 gold kroner and a royal grant of more than 100 gold kroner, which barely sustains a decent livelihood for an old noble family.

When Sterling X was king, General Fansnik's grandfather passed away and the Viscount of Honor was gone. Although his father was once again named Baron Emeritus by the Royal Register, the title pension was halved. This has had a huge impact on the lives of General Van Snick's family. It takes a lot of money to maintain a decent life for an old brand aristocratic family, and his talented father's several investment failures have made this aristocratic family even worse...

General Van Snick, Jr., knew that when the next king came to the throne, his father passed away and he had no expectation of getting the title book sealed from the royal family. Although common to the Sterling royal family, the longer the relationship is thinner, the longer the kinship cannot last for three generations, and his future depends on his own efforts. So when I was a young man, General Van Snick signed up for the Royal Juvenile Military Academy. With hard work and hard work, it was easy to serve in the army after graduation.

In fact, General Van Snick is not a brave man, because he chose logistics because he was afraid of dying, so that he wouldn't have to temporarily go to the front line in a war. As a professional logistics officer, he was qualified and, because his last name was Sterling, took advantage of his promotion and promotion, becoming a colonel officer in charge of logistics in only 21 years. It is noteworthy that he has served in the logistics department of the Royal Army Ministry and has never been on the battlefield.

This trip to the Rangers is the most important turning point in General Van Snick's life. First, his rank was promoted again, from colonel to Major General, when he was 48 years old and finally crossed the most difficult level of promotion for the Kingdom's logistics and technical officers. Secondly, it means that he was reintegrated into the royal watch list, and it is even possible to recognise him as a member of the royal family and regain the title book.

In fact, when General Fansnik received a dispatch order to come to the Rangers, that would be the beginning of the Battle of Bering Ghana. Five standing regiments of the Kingdom of Hicks marched heavily towards Cromwell, and the Cavaliers easily abandoned the capital, Wickham Castle, and moved to Bering Ghana, where the situation seemed very tense and critical.

So General Van Snick was unexpectedly seriously ill, he threw up and fell down, he couldn't even stand up straight, and no matter what pharmacist he hired, he couldn't help his condition. Faced with his friends and colleagues in the army who visited him, General Van Snick, with his pale face, was powerless to lie in bed, and his grief indicated that he was unlucky and should not be ill at this time. He hopes to go to the kingdom of the mainland of Nubicia overseas and resist invading enemies together with a troupe of struggling rangers, living and dying together, just not expecting this major illness to drag his journey...

But as soon as the news of Big Short Ghana arrived and was confirmed, General Fansnik jumped out of his hospital bed and packed his bags and rushed to the mainland of Nubia. He gave words to his friends and relatives who had sent him, saying that he had missed the victory fruit of the battle as a result of a major illness. Now that the war had just ended, a total of 300,000 enemies had been captured. One could imagine how busy logistical affairs were. He must not fail to perform his duties because he is ill, at a time when his hero is useful.

After only a month and a half, General Fansnik arrived at the Rangers' compound and took over the position of Logistics Supervisor. On the first day of his tenure, he ordered that the luxury goods enjoyed by the five senior officers of the Standing Regiment of the Kingdom of Hicks contained in the four four-wheeled wagons that Claude handed over to Regiment Command be sealed and ready to be handed over to the Sterling royal family as a sign of his loyalty and filial devotion to the royal family...

Even General Michelch did not expect this nascent Logistics Supervisor to be on such an unusual path. He gently reminded General Fansnik that he had left the luxury goods contained in the four wagons until now with the new logistics chief, in the hope that General Fansnik would take the opportunity to get acquainted with the Rangers. He handed over all these luxury items as trophies to the royal family and easily offended officers in the regiment because he did so against the traditional rules for the distribution of trophies...

But General Michelch soon became the closest guard of the Sterling royal family to the set of General Fansnik's Rangers. Everything captured on the battlefield belonged to the royal family. Only the practice of handing it over to the royal family before being allocated by the royal family could demonstrate the loyalty of the Rangers to the royal family and the royal patronage and care of the Rangers.

Because of what General Michelch called the subordinate rule on the traditional distribution of loot, General Van Snick accused him of disrespecting the Sterling royal family and doubted whether General Michelch had failed to see the Sterling royal family because he thought he was too grateful to win the battle...

Immediately after General Fansnik's expansion of the Rangers, the enlistment of new recruits and the replacement of equipment, all these troubles were pushed to Colonel Skerry, Deputy Head of the Regiment's Logistics Department, among others. A thoughtful search for all the loot seized by the Rangers after the victory of the entire Battle of Bering Ghana and soon found a clue in the statements of the logistics chief officers of the captured Kingdom of Hicks that the Kingdom of Hicks had paid to the five Standing Legions, worth more than half a million gold kroner. Now he is as good as the treasure, Lima finds the troubled rider who took over the military cache of Wickham Castle and Captain Claude...

It's just that General Fansnik didn't expect this Colonel Commander Claude to be a prick, and he and the Rangers showed General Fansnik what it means to be a proud soldier. Instead of looking at General Fansnik as a logistics chief and asking for gift money in private to say good things, they shouted out loud and unjust accusations that General Fansnik was making money for selfishness and promotion to the benefit of the Rangers.

That Claude not only cooperated with the investigation, but also made public the itineraries of all the regimental officers and soldiers who took over the castle of Wickham to give evidence. To prove that they had inadvertently missed the huge sum of military money stored in the area of ammunition, firearms and ammunition warehouses by the Kingdom of Hicks because of the short period of occupation in order to accomplish the task of burning the warehouses, which caused those warehouses to explode and let that huge sum of military money fly. It was their inadvertent loss, and it was not General Van Snick's turn to pursue the cause, nor was it the property of the kingdom to say the least.

General Van Snick thus seemed passive, wronging his legions for their military expenses, so much so that his reputation continued to decline in the Rangers that no one was willing to deal with him. But General Van Snick still bites Claude for two reasons. One of the logistics officers in charge of the Hicks Kingdom confessed that the military money stored in the warehouse was made of gold and silver copper coins, not paper products such as gold dollar rolls, and that even a fire and explosion should leave traces and could not have disappeared.

The second reason was that he looked at Claude very badly and knew that Claude was General Michel's beloved general. He could make a big fuss about the unaccounted for military expenditure, and Claude, who was the most suspected recipient of private military expenditure, could easily be suspended from the position of commander of the 131 regiment and investigated above.

This not only freed the next senior officer from the Royal Sterling family, but also lessened General Michelchi's influence in the Corps accordingly. At the very least, the Rangers will no longer listen to General Michelchi. General Fansnik believes that what he does will be seen in his eyes and will like his performance...

But what General Van Snick didn't expect was that Claude was in such a hurry that he took a cruise to the rubble of Castle Wickham to dig up the military bill. At first, he only heard a joke, not that he didn't send someone to look for it, but the warehouse of materials said to store military expenses became a big hole because of the big explosion, and those people dug around the big hole, they didn't find the money box filled with gold and silver copper coins, they had to go back.

But after half a month of digging at Wickham Castle, Claude discovered that he wasn't working next to the big pit, but was looking for it in the ashes and garbage of the castle's ruins. In his view, the explosion in the ammunition depot was likely to blow up gold and silver coins used as military spending all over the castle, looking in that direction, with unexpected results.

The rest of the Rangers on the lookout are blushing, so why can't we dig? They then headed off to Wickham Castle, where they occupied a plot of land and joined a hot excavation site. Seems like every excavating unit has had a good harvest, and the officers in charge have a smile on their faces...

After hearing these rumours, General Van Snick rushed to visit Wickham Castle and disappointed him, clearing Claude and Ranger, who had done the right thing, of the suspicion of privately concealing the military spoils.

They do not know that this huge sum of money exists in the Kingdom of Hicks, and the gold and silver copper coin of that sum is, as Claude expected, hidden by sludgy ashes as the explosion scattered all over the castle. The pieces of gold and silver coins that they end up with that explosion, as well as the deformed coins, clearly show the truth.

But even more disappointing was General Fansnik's discovery that he could not confiscate the gains of the Rangers' forces. Because these excavated gold and silver copper coins are no longer loot seizures, he has no authority at all to order the army officers to hand over their harvests. And now the whole of Wickham Castle has become a gold-mining place with nearly half a million gold kroner's worth buried in it, but he can't profit from it...

Especially when General Van Snick discovered that a soldier had found a gold shield, a gold coin issued by the Kingdom of Hicks, he saw the soldier shove the coin in his trouser pocket. He was deeply jealous and irritated by this scene, and immediately drove back to his regiment, trying to find a way for General Michelch to order all troops excavated at Castle Wickham to be redeployed for the so-called military discipline. General Fansnik himself then took all the logistically heavy units under the logistics department to the ruins of Castle Wickham and sealed off the entire area before ordering the soldiers to excavate.

Only after more than a month of torment did General Van Snick find a gold and silver coin worth more than 10,000 crowns, which was only harvested when he watched closely to dig the soldiers. He had always wondered whether the soldiers below had hidden the coins they had dug, and almost all of them had to search themselves for each of the soldiers they had dug.

The fact is, however, that he had personally searched the bodies of several soldiers suspected of hiding and found nothing. This makes him wonder if these soldiers didn't hide the coins they dug, but where they kept them, and come back later to collect them...

Looking at the coins found, General Fansnik felt terribly grieved by the enormous military expenditures of the Kingdom of Hicks, valued at more than half a million gold kroner, which he had received only the smallest of them and distributed to the troops involved in the excavation. Otherwise, he would be accused by his subordinates of using his own private forces for private work, which is a huge crime in the military, even if his last name is Sterling. It's just the next round, not much left in his hands.

That is why General Van Snick went to the officers in charge of the forces that had excavated the ruins of Castle Wickham and asked for a share of their harvest. He felt that the reason for his low harvest was that it was too late, and those troops had found most of the military money in the excavation process, leaving it to themselves to end.

But the commander in charge of those forces thought that General Fansnik was a little greedy, and that they had something to gain from the ruins of Wickham, which, taken together, was worth more than 10,000 gold kroner. Of course, the soldiers are certain to have a private stash, which will not be too much, and is estimated to be worth about one or two thousand gold kroner at most. If one unit reaps so much, the total of the seventy-eight troops dug on the rubble of Wickham Castle will reap more than 100,000, perhaps more from the first crusade.

For the total military expenditure of the Kingdom of Hicks, which is worth more than half a million gold kroner, you will receive 100,000, at most 200,000, and the remaining 300,000 will be rounded up by you. Forcing everyone back to the battalion by force of power, he led the team there for more than a month, and now he comes back and says there's not much to be gained, letting you surrender a profit. The ghost will believe your statement, Claude suspects that he is hiding the truth and deliberately pretending to be poor in front of everyone. Everyone believes Claude...

While General Van Snick was furious with no excuse, and everyone in the Ranger Corps despised his character for believing that he had hidden hundreds of thousands of military dollars that had been dug up, Claude received a summons order from General Michel. General Michelch's first words surprised Claude, because General Claude said I was ready to withdraw you from the Rangers...