Black Iron’s Glory

Chapter 462: Why aren't the Hicks attacking yet?

Perhaps it was the fierce battle with the Hicks Light Cavalry, and, uh, the Nikancas categorically refused to acknowledge that they had been subjected to a massacre, that they had admitted only one hundred and twenty-six scouts, and that they had been ambushed and raided by the Hicks' 240 Light Cavalry in the course of detecting hostilities. After a strenuous struggle to kill, they paid huge casualties, repelled their enemies, and the remaining seven warriors turned back...

There was also that bombing camp, where tens of thousands of Nikantha armed and strong defensive fronts, in the absence of a real Hicks soldier, fled clean overnight after tens of thousands of Nikantha armed and strong crying dads shouted at their mothers and abandoned their armor. The two incidents finally made Nikancha elders and chiefs aware of the reality and soon reached an agreement with the immediate area of war.

Claude, however, was feeling a little uncomfortable because General Bolognick and General Skerry of theatre headquarters actually gave the Nikans a discount when they reached an agreement with the Nikans. Fortunately, the two generals were smart enough not to give way to the land ceded, but simply to discount Claude's extortion of the Nikans' sum of 2 million gold and silver ingots worth 800,000 gold and silver.

General Skerry explained in a falcon letter that General Bolognick feared that bargaining with the Nikancas would delay the day, delay the fighter jets and delay the field defense mission. After all, the Hicks have arrived at the northern and eastern mountain borders, and if they detect a void in the eastern mountains, it is easy to disrupt the original defensive deployment plan, causing unnecessary casualties to the troops on the front line...

So General Skerry and General Bolognick, after discussing it, thought we could take a step back. As long as the Nikancas agreed to hand over the territory delineated by Claude, some financial relief could be given to the representatives of those Nikancas who came to the negotiations. At least for the representatives of the Nikancas, they didn't care much about the cleared mountain territory, but rather very much about the money, and at the beginning of the negotiations they were willing to give only half a million gold kroner...

Claude, General Albert and General Beechlin are both somewhat unclear as to why the Nikancas value money so little as the land.

But finally, think about the fact that the Nikans should think that the land they currently occupy is big enough, not to mention the five million Nikans, which is two or three times more arranged. So instead of thinking about the losses and inappropriateness of the mountain territory that was handed over to the direct jurisdiction war zone, it would be wise for them to avoid this war with the Hicks, with the direct jurisdiction war zone in front of them, so that they could live their own colonial life in peace...

Only in terms of funding, the Nikansas understood that the territory they had delivered was the price they had paid, so there was no need to pay any more hire money to the troops in the immediate area of operations. If the Hicks were defeated, the soldiers would be rewarded in their own war zone, and if defeated, they would be punished in the war zone, which had nothing to do with the Nikantha. Claude's request for a reward of two million gold kroner was purely extortion.

It was really difficult to get empty gloves out of the pockets of the Nikanchas, even if General Bolognick and General Skerry gave them a 50% discount, asking them to give a million gold kroons, and they were resolutely refusing, saying that they would give up to half a million gold kroons.

It took only one day for the settlement territory to be negotiated and five days for the issue of negotiable funding to be resolved. At the end of the day, General Bolognick filmed the table, 800,000 gold kroner, which is the bottom line. If you can't talk about it, go away. That's the deal with the Nikanca negotiators...

Negotiations with the Nikancas have meant that where Claude is now located, the eastern mountains, the northern coastal mountains have become yet another area under the jurisdiction of the theatre, only to be able to transform the area into a new area under the jurisdiction of the theatre, depending on the outcome of the war that Claude commands against the Hicks. If you win the war zone and open up the land for the kingdom of Ovilas again, if you lose, you have nothing to lose, and you may have to pay for another jurisdiction.

Claude was sure of the next war, not of him. Don't look, the Hicks have a total of over 400,000 troops in seven standing regiments this time, but they can't put all of them into the offensive. With what is now known about the Hicks, it is clear that they will use the eastern mountains as breakthroughs in their offensive.

In the rear plains, the Fombix Gang Hicks deployed a standing regiment to prevent troops from entering the immediate area of operations from sneaking back into the General Logistics Base battalion. Two standing regiments were deployed at the northern mountain border for blockade and defence, thus preventing three standing regiments from entering the offensive.

While the eastern mountain border has four standing regiments deployed, one of them is the Royal Cavalier Reserve Corps, which belongs to the Light Rider Corps, and it is the fools who let the Light Riders into the mountains to fight.

So there are only three standing regiments that the Hicks can attack on the eastern mountain border. After entering the eastern frontier mountains, the Hicks, like the last war, had to send a standing army to protect the logistics corridor. So what they can really attack is just two standing legions of more than 100,000 troops, which Claude has yet to see.

Claude returned the three local guard regiments withdrawn from the eastern forward hill position to their original sites and positions, while General Bitchclin led a division of the Rock Regiment plus two main field regiments to the three defensive fronts in the middle of the mountains to direct defensive operations. The Legion of Thunder continues to rest until the Hicks attack.

This time, however, the Hicks were more tolerant, and by June, there were no signs of an attack by the Hicks. Intelligence from latent agents in the Gulf City of Rodex indicates that the Hicks have also made extensive acquisitions of military materiel, such as grass, in the colonies of the West Coast countries, and that the General Logistics Base battalion near Gulf City is increasingly transporting acquisitions of grass and other materiel to the camps on the front line.

According to spying sources, the Hicks were prepared to stock all three camps on the front line for three months of grass. Looks like the Hicks were starving and trying to be safe. Even the agents operating in the name of the manager of the bison business were once again ordered 100,000 barrels of wheat wine to be transported to the Rodex Bay colony within three months...

For theatre and direct jurisdiction, the sooner the Hicks launch their offensive, the better it will be until next year. In that way, at least half of the two regiments in theatre would be equipped with new rifles and would be better prepared and better prepared. Only after June, July came, the Hicks still had nothing to do with it, and now even Claude had some confusion in his mind about what the Hicks were up to.

Claude was disappointed that, even if he had launched the Wolftooth Squadron, he had sent McJackie's 131th Battalion to ambush the Hicks' patrol team and capture some of the Hicks' captives, even though the captives did not understand why their superiors had never intended to launch an offensive, as if they had come to confront the forces of the immediate battle zone on the mountain border.

Another thing that made Claude and several generals in the war zone sad was Colonel Boquer's return to the kingdom itself on behalf of the Overseas Territories, his visit to the King's capital with a large number of gifts to see the new King Sterling XI, to convey the tribute of the war zone and to seek clarification of the King's views and disposition plans for the war zone. It's been more than three months now, and there's no message.

Colonel Boquer should be back by schedule and time. For more than three months now, there has still not been a single maritime vessel in the mainland of the Kingdom that has arrived in the direct overseas jurisdiction, and the situation is very strange. After General Bolognick's Eagle Messenger and Claude and others had discussed it, he decided to send two ocean smuggling vessels back to the mainland of the Kingdom for information on the whereabouts of Colonel Bolognick's men...

Even though Claude is worried about what happened to his teenager friend that prevented him from turning back to the direct jurisdiction, his main focus at the moment is the movement of the Hicks. Claude personally went to the eastern mountain border to find out why the Hicks had delayed their attack, only that he had been on the front line for almost half a month or had no clue.

The Hicks closed their perimeter, and the patrols sent were operating only five miles in front of their barracks. If ambushed within such a distance, the response of those Hicks patrols was to prepare the first time with an upside-down gun to fight back, awaiting rescue from the battalion and forcing the soldiers of the ambushed Legion of Thunder to abandon their loot and evacuate.

Because the soldiers of the Legion of Thunder, if they emerge from the ambush point, are vulnerable to the shooting of the enemy lying on the ground, causing casualties. If we continue to confront each other, it will be difficult for us to protect ourselves when the battalions of enemies arrive. Unless the entire patrol team of the Hicks can be eliminated by first-round fire during an ambush, the ambush point can only be evacuated if there are no casualties on its own.

Claude, on the other hand, forbids the enemy to take the lives of his own comrades. After all, the enemy has the advantage of being strong and must not be consumed with the enemy. In Claude's eyes, the lives of his soldiers were more precious than those of the Hicks, mainly because it was either the Wolftooth Squadron or McJackie's 131th Battalion that were carrying out ambush missions, both of which were the elite forces of Claude's men.

The ambush could not be replaced by a barracks of surveillance of the enemy, and what depressed Claude was that the Hicks were holding various military training sessions behind their own barracks every day, as if they were coming to practice in action. After half a month of observation, Claude still found no indication that the Hicks were ready to attack, and ended up with a helpless Rotary Defense Front command.

At the end of July, Claude again received updates from agents lurking in the Gulf of Rhodes, who said they had learned from a Hicks logistics chief in a known General Logistics Base battalion that the main reason why the Hicks did not launch their offensive was that there were still some shortages of armaments and that they were awaiting the arrival of another shipment of supplies in mid-August.

In addition, Admiral Norburyton, commander-in-chief of the Hicks Army, who commanded the first attack on the eastern mountains by five Shameful legions of veterans of the Kingdom of Hicks. Count Pont Belondi has been removed from his post by Machid III. Another Admiral of the Hicks Royal Army, Clario. Marquis de Chirios, 43 years old.

The agents finally heard about this, Clario. What was Marquis de Chirios like, and they got a lot of information from the mouths of those Hicks logistics officers. If the old commander-in-chief who was dismissed was an old, old-fashioned member of the Hicks kingdom, then this is Clario, who will succeed the commander-in-chief. The Marquis de Chirios is the representative of the Shadows of the Kingdom of Hicks.

They say this Clario. Marquis de Chirios insisted that the Kingdom of Hicks should learn the lessons of the last three colonial wars, carry out military reforms, study new types of weapons and cultivate elite regiments, offending a group of elders in the military community of the Kingdom of Hicks. It's just that during the civil unrest in the Hicks kingdom, this Clario... Marquis de Chirios took the initiative to participate in the war and to serve McKid III, gaining the trust and joy of McKid III.

The noble rebellion of the Hicks kingdom was able to calm down in the short term, beating the entire kingdom into ruins for three years, unlike the second king of the Orvillas kingdom, mainly this Clario. The Marquis de Chirios has done much in it. He was hailed as the best and longest offensive of the Kingdom of Hicks, and in the aftermath of the civil unrest he led a corps of light riders that suddenly plunged into the rear of the rebel noble coalition. Four rebel noble territories were swept away within a month, leading to the collapse of rebel noble coalitions on the front lines, thus ending civil unrest in the Kingdom of Hicks.

After the war, the adult was promoted not only to the rank of Marquis by the Count, but also from Major General of the Kingdom to Admiral of the Kingdom. He became the red man in the eyes of Machid III, the Reigning Minister of the Kingdom. This assignment to the continent of Nubicia to take over the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Front Line is clearly in the hope that Machid III will bring victory and glory to this colonial war...

This guy is not an easy opponent... Claude touched his chin with mustache thinking. Intelligence revealed that the new Admiral of the Kingdom of Hicks, the commander-in-chief of the front line, had handed over his duties to the former commander-in-chief who had been dismissed by the end of April, but it was not until the end of July that the agents found out. Obviously, this Clario. The Marquis de Chirios was so knowledgeable about secrecy and keeping a low profile that no new commander of the Hicks had been found in the immediate battlefield.

In addition, the new front-line commander of the Kingdom of Hicks, named the best and longest attacker in the Kingdom of Hicks, just wondered in which direction and in what way he would direct the Hicks to attack, and that was where Claude needed to think headaches.

Sometimes Claude envies the calm of General Beechcrin because General Beechcrin is very confident that he has designed and directed the construction of a defensive needle and believes that the Hicks have no chance of breaking through the defensive front he commands.

On 13 August, the kingdom of the Six Kingdoms' naval fleet and joint fleet again escorted a large number of sea vessels loaded with armaments and grass to the Rodex Bay colony. After receiving intelligence reports that the Hicks were transporting large quantities of armament to the front line, Claude again issued a standby order in anticipation of the enemy's intended attack.

It was just an unexpected surprise to Claude that the Hicks did not launch an offensive until the end of August. Agents reported that both the King's and United Fleets of the Kingdom of Hicks had returned from the Gulf of Rhodes, docked in shallow offshore shipping vessels that were carrying grain and supplies from the colonies of the countries of the West Coast, and that their owners would leave as soon as they settled freight charges or freight charges.

What the hell is wrong with the Hicks? Why don't we attack yet... Claude's heart is filled with unknown irritability and anxiety...