Black Iron’s Glory

Chapter 425: Messages from Smugglers

The battle was actually logistical, and that's what Marshal Michel said at the senior seminar. The eastern part of the Farea continent would have been reunified had it not been for the five-year Eastern War, when the kingdom of Ovieras had exhausted the gold coins of its treasury and had had to seek a truce. It was because there was no way to go on, and after five years of fighting in the eastern region, it had to end with two defeats.

Sister Anna said Claude was not surprised that a new rifle was manufactured at a cost of around seven to eight gold kroners. Because the large-scale manufacture of new types of rifles requires the opening of a firearms manufacturing workshop, the design of a mechanical production line and the unified production and assembly of the accessories of new types of rifles. Mrs. Sonia said that the production of 100,000 new rifles was half the cost of the machine line.

If Claude's investment in purchasing processing machinery equipment had not been reduced by obtaining from Port Vibator the machinery for the manufacture of guns and artillery shipped from the Kingdom of Hicks, the cost of producing a new type of gun might have doubled. Then, like revolvers, it becomes a collection of wealthy people without access to large-scale promotional applications.

Claude wanted to equip his Thunder Legion with new rifles and make it an elite, timeless weapon. But a Thunder Corps of 65,000 men, all equipped with new rifles, would take 70,000. At the cost of producing eight gold kroner for a new rifle, a Thunder Regiment would require 560,000 gold kroner to change outfits. And that's almost two years of military spending for the Legion of Thunder and the Legion of Rock.

This is just the price of equipment for a new type of rifle, don't forget that you need more bullets. If a new rifle is equipped with a hundred rounds of ammunition, the price of one bullet is three sonars, and a hundred rounds of ammunition is three hundred sonars, equal to thirty riazos, equal to three silver tall. But the problem is that a hundred rounds of this new rifle is either a daily backup or a carry-on for every soldier on the battlefield, and the usual training consumption is not counted.

In accordance with the training requirements of the Royal Ovieras Army Department, conscripts are trained in shooting for a period of one month. Thirty live shots are fired each day, and errors in the process require refinement. On average, 1,000 live shots are fired in a month to master the performance of the Obash III.

If the new rifle is equipped to the unit, the soldiers will also need such live fire training to master the performance of the new rifle, although the cost of this training is a huge expense. A soldier who trains 1,000 live ammunition shots in a month will reimburse a thousand bullets at a cost of 30 silver tall, or six gold crowns. In other words, this month's live shooting battlefield costs six gold kroner per soldier, 65,000 men per legion...

This is just the beginning, and not after a month of live fire training, soldiers do not need to consume ammunition. Each soldier still undergoes live ammunition training, 30 rounds at a time and three live rounds a month. Even if one hundred rounds are consumed per month, it is 1,200 rounds a year, and almost seven gold kroner rounds a year.

In other words, if Claude wanted to equip the Legion of Thunder with a new rifle, one Legion's weaponry and one year's ammunition would cost nearly KK 1,340,000, roughly five or six years of military spending for two Legions in the current theatre. So sister Anna tells Claude bluntly that the only downside to a new rifle is that it's expensive, and it's really very difficult to equip an entire regiment on such a large scale at such a high cost.

Expensive, but Claude believes that General Bolognick and others, when they see the new rifle, will understand how much more combat it will add to both regiments. Compared to the life of a soldier, the cost of a new rifle is good value for money, an army equipped with a new rifle, and Claude is confident to defeat ten times as many enemies.

In the next two months, Claude went to Wickham Castle under Cromwell to oversee the regiment's recruit training and regiment integration. The Thunder Regiment is an offensive Light Rider Regiment, where each recruit not only undergoes normal queue training, but also completes live fire training for the Obash 3 type fireline gun. There is also a need for riding training, tactical exercises with riders and, finally, field training developed by Claude.

Busy days go by quickly, turning to August. As soon as Claude returned from the training field to inspect the troops, a correspondent sent a message from the Hawk in theatre headquarters. It says here that a wrecked, seemingly deep-sea smuggler arrived in the port of Vibato after a very intense naval battle and that the captain was from the Kingdom of Nasseri.

Now that the smuggler has been apprehended, the captain and the surviving crew have been transported by sea to the battlefield headquarters of Lake Lang, under Amphiston's administration, General Bolognick sent Claude back to listen together to news from the captain of the Kingdom of Nasserley and the rest of the crew about the kingdom itself and the eastern countries of the Farea continent.

This cannot be delayed. Claude left for Amphiston overnight. It took seven or eight days to reach theatre headquarters, when the captain and crew of the smuggling ship had given all known information twice.

General Scully saw Claude rush back in full of dust and handed him a folder: "Their confessions are recorded on it and have been sorted out, with news of the war on the mainland of the kingdom. We can't tell right now what this smuggling captain is saying is true or false. After all, he is a man of the Nasserli kingdom and our dead enemy. ”

Claude nodded, took the folder, turned it over, and what, the war between the two kingdoms of the kingdom is still going on? How is it possible that Prince Hansburg and Prince Widreck II, or Sterling XI, are still indistinguishable and unable to fight?

This smuggling ship captain of the Kingdom of Nasserley said that last May Prince Widreck of the Kingdom of Ovieras led the Red Dragon Corps and the Guardian Corps to the Plains of Ibnister, while Grand Prince Hansburg had already led a standing corps and two newly formed second-line corps with a strong line of defense in Lake Etobranopez.

Almost everyone thought that Prince Widreck would be defeated before the war, that the great Prince of Hansburg had taken over the capital, and that he had cleansed those who opposed him of his power and power, mobilizing the human and military resources of the entire capital, possessing the landowners.

Prince Widreck's performance after his ascension to Sterling XI was not very good, internal coordination was poor, the forces fought for power and interests, and the response to the Grand Prince's rebellion was slow. Especially after locking down Grand Prince Hansburg's forces on the Odin Mountains defensive line, he was even more careless, believing that the Grand Prince had lost his threat to the King's capital and that the rebels under the Grand Prince could be eliminated only by fighting a war of attrition.

But no one expected a cooperation agreement between the Grand Prince of Hansburg and the Kingdom of Hicks, starting with a naval clip to destroy the Kingdom's fearless fleet, followed by the use of the Kingdom of Hicks' naval fleet and joint fleet to escort the Blue Feathers Regiment and a standing legion straight into the Kingdom's hinterland by sea, the King of Surprise. Prince Widreck ran away at night and threw the whole king to the Great Prince of Hansburg.

Although Prince Widreck, who fled to Berta Arnia County with the assistance of his father-in-law, Marshal Zigfite, mastered the kingdom's three Ace Field Regiments, the Lion Vulture Regiment and the Guardian Regiment, he re-established the King's Court and led the Red Dragon Regiment and the Guardian Regiment to rebuild their flags. But few would look forward to Prince Widreck's future. After all, his failure to abandon the king made him lose a lot of points in the eyes of a neutral.

And with the military command talent that Prince Widreck doesn't know, it's impossible to be the opponent of the long-established Grand Prince Hansburg. So some of the kings who tend to be big princes, the newspapers, even describe Prince Widreck's actions as a gambler's lone throw, thinking that it was destined to win a great victory over Prince Widreck's army and win the crown of the kingdom of Ovieras.

Contacts between the two forces began in mid-May, and on 24 May, the Red Dragon Corps and the IGN launched a full-scale offensive. As a result, it was almost unexpected to all that a standing regiment and two second-line regiments deployed by Grand Prince Hansburg on the defensive front had almost collapsed and could not resist the brutal offensive of the Red Dragon Corps and the Guardian Corps. Less than five days later, the Red Dragon Regiment and the Guardian Regiment came under the King's Landing.

The outcome of this war shocked all those who followed it. It was not until the end of the entire Ibnister Plains battle that news came out that the Red Dragon Corps and the Guard Corps had seized the enemy's defensive front so quickly that they had used a new weapon to throw bombs that could explode.

An explosion occurs when such projectiles are thrown onto a defensive position. The defensive forces deployed by Grand Prince Hansburg on the defensive front were almost wiped out, and the fall of the position was inevitable. It is said that the countries of the Farea continent have now begun to study and emulate this projectile, and no one is willing to suffer the same attacks.

Claude felt a little dizzy. It was unexpected that the bomb throwing purchased by the assassinated General Algers for the military industry of his old noble family would have helped Prince Widreck so much. No wonder Prince Widreck was confident that the trooper king was against Prince Hansburg. It was the bomb throwing that gave him courage.

General Scully stood right next to Claude, who knew Claude was selling production permits for the dropping of bombs to General Algers, and saw Claude staring at the documents, naturally knowing what Claude was thinking.

He said, "I didn't expect you to do so much credit for dropping the bomb, otherwise we would all have been declared treasonous if Prince Hansburg had won. But now the countries of the Farea continent are developing projectiles, and this smuggling ship from the Kingdom of Nasseri carries the projectiles they produce, and they are also using the projectiles to kill a living way out of the pirate ambush to the port of Vibato. ”

Claude mumbled, “Are their projectiles like ours? ”

General Skerry shook his head: “Not at all. Their projectiles were thrown like an altar, with a flame rope inserted on it, lit on the thrower, then thrown out, at a distance of more than 100 metres. In addition, their thrower was mounted on a boat, some like a catapult, larger than they could move. And they call this projectile a blossom bomb, and the captain says that some countries are called bombs, with different names but basically the same effect, and when you throw it out, the rope will explode. ”

“Hmm?” Claude felt a little strange: "Are all the projectiles they imitated firewire? Without our kind of pull wire internal ignition projectiles? ”

“No, the captain said the projectiles coming from the kingdom of Orvillas were firewired. Essentially, the length of the line has fixed the distance to be thrown, making sure that it explodes when it is thrown at the target. However, because of the need to ignite with a fire rope, it cannot be used during rainy days and is occasionally thrown out for a variety of reasons, which prevents the throwing of bombs from exploding. ”

General Skerry also wondered why the kingdom's military industry had changed its throwing of bombs to a way of igniting explosions with fire ropes, limiting the use of throwing bombs on rainy days alone. He pointed to the document in Claude's hand: "If you keep looking, Prince Hansburg has now learned how to throw a bomb and pulled the situation against him back into balance..."

As the captain of the smuggling ship was a man of the Kingdom of Nasserley, the enemy of the Kingdom of Auvellas, the Kingdom of Nasserley welcomed the outbreak of civil war in the Second King's dispute in the Kingdom of Auvellas. Detailed war processes and commentaries are often published in newspapers, most of them happily ever after, but that is why the captain of this smuggling ship is well aware of the events that have taken place in the Kingdom of Auveras.

After the Red Dragon Corps and the Guardian Corps approached the King's capital, the Grand Prince of Hansburg could only hold a very simple boarding ceremony in the palace. Because Sterling XI's name had been worn over his head by Widreck, the Great Prince of Hansburg called himself Hansburg I. Upon assuming the throne, the Grand Prince of Hansburg announced a tour of the south-western provinces of the Kingdom, leading the Blue Feather Regiment in a hurry to withdraw its troops from the King.

Less than half a day after his departure, the SS entered Wangdu and regained control of Wangdu. Three days later, Prince Widreck proudly held a triumphal parade at the King's Landing, announcing the return of the King to the throne. Subsequently, a series of arrests were carried out in the King, and all local officials and nobles who had surrendered to Prince Hansburg during the fall of the King were arrested and jailed, and they had to pay a large ransom in order to be released...

After nearly a month's delay, Prince Widreck ordered the Red Dragon Regiment to pursue Prince Hansburg's evacuation troops, while issuing circulars requiring second-line regiments from all regions to participate in the conscription of the rebel forces to which Prince Hansburg belongs. But Prince Widreck reacted a little too slowly, giving Grand Prince Hansburg more than a month to steady his footsteps in more than a dozen counties southwest of the kingdom.

The captain of the smuggling ship of the Kingdom of Nasserli stated that, after the withdrawal of the forces led by the Grand Prince Hansburg from all the kings, he had sent branches to sweep more than a dozen counties in the south-western direction of the kingdom over the following month, wiping out all local forces and armaments loyal to Prince Widreck and gaining time and local support for himself.

When the Red Dragon Regiment arrived a month later to hunt down Prince Hansburg's rebels, Prince Hansburg deliberately commanded the troops to fight and retreat, luring the Red Dragon Regiment to pursue them. Finally, the Red Dragon Corps was besieged in Tamorus County. The Red Dragon Legion, which had broken into despair, had used projectiles to kill a way out, but after the war the Red Dragon Legion had been maimed. This is the Tamorus County Grand Jet, by which Prince Hansburg turned his back on victory.

Prince Widreck feared another surprise attack on Wangdu and did not allow the Guardian Regiment to strike, but merely ordered the formation of the Red Dragon Regiment and a dozen second-line regiments to be formed before it was too late. Prince Hansburg, meanwhile, stepped up the consolidation of financial and force in more than a dozen local counties in the south-west, and seized droppings in the battle to surround the Red Dragon Corps, replicating and equipping the troops under his command as well.

Between October of last year and May of this year, the two princes accumulated forces on their respective controlled land borders, and the clouds of the Great War once again swept over the skies of the Kingdom of Ovilas. I just don't know which prince will win the next battle...