Black Iron’s Glory

Chapter 463 Attack and Rescue

On September 3rd, the Hicks finally made their move, and they launched an attack on the eastern mountain border with a legion of troops, using a new weapon that they had just delivered, a giant cantilever thrower, just like the giant stone throwers of ancient times. It's just that this cantilever throws a projectile that's twice as powerful as an iron pumpkin 350 meters away, and the explosive power is incredible.

Although the first defensive position in the frontier mountains to come into contact with the enemy immediately gathered three light infantry field artillery from the position and bombarded such a huge thrower, one of them was successfully destroyed. But the Hicks also reacted quickly, surrounding the remaining four throwers with more than thirty wooden platoons. So light infantry field artillery doesn't work unless the solid bullet hits the giant cantilever, it just takes luck, 600 meters apart, the cantilever is not much thicker in the gunner's eyes than a chopstick...

Perhaps the only downside to this huge cantilever thrower is that it's very bulky and moves very slowly. It took the Hicks a day to move four throwers in front of the first defensive position and try to throw several huge throwers.

The veterans of a battalion at the defensive position watched as the projectiles landed on the hillside and blew up several large pits. Everyone knew that when the Hicks moved the four projectiles to their positions tomorrow, the defensive position would lead to a violent bombardment by the enemy. The most painful thing is that the guards at the position had no way to fight back and had to reactively withstand the bombing...

The veterans in the defensive position were also prepared to carry out night raids and take the initiative to destroy the four giant, hegemonic throwers. But the Hicks had long been on guard, with a tight perimeter, and had just been spotted by the Hicks near the perimeter. The two sides then engaged in intense exchanges of fire, using their respective projectiles. With the arrival of the Hicks reinforcements, the veterans of the night attack returned with half of the casualties.

At noon the following day, after the first movable and adjusted thrower hit the first giant projectile onto the defensive position, the officers at the defensive position were helpless in giving an order to retreat. This first message was sent to Defensive Front Command, and Claude immediately set out to the frontier mountains to see for himself the enemy's giant bulldozer...

After receiving reports of an attack by the Hopes, General Claude and General Bitchklin, General Albert, finally let go of their minds. The news of the Hicks launching five giant cantilever throwers then reached Claude et al., who agreed that the reason the Hicks did not launch their offense was because they were waiting for the delivery of such throwers to arrive...

Then came the report of the failure of the first defensive position in the frontier mountains, and Claude wanted to curse his mother when he saw it said that the Hicks' giant, overwhelming thrower could throw twice as many bombs as a pumpkin iron over 300 metres away. The Hicks seem to be focusing their research on the development of their new weapon, which according to the game, has filled all the technical points for the projectiles.

Claude hates toothaches that can throw twice as many projectiles as iron pumpkins over 300 meters away. On my side, it's not easy to study the defensive throwers that have been set up, only throwing the lightest projectiles 300 meters away. The throwing distance is far short compared to the Hicks' giant, unbeatable thrower. It is conceivable that if the Hicks were to throw iron pumpkins with this giant unhealed thrower, the throwing distance would increase and the defensive positions would only be bombarded unilaterally.

The only good news that made Claude feel a little better was that the Hicks' giant, unhealed thrower was moving far and fast enough. It took Claude three days to reach the frontier mountains, and it was estimated that it would take a day before the Hicks had arrived in front of the second defensive position three days after taking over the first defensive position.

The reason is that the Hicks had to fix the road before they could move those four giant, unhealed throwers to the front of the position, otherwise if the throwers could not be moved up, the Hicks would lose their weapons of attack and launch an offensive that would inevitably lead to a bloodshed in front of a well-guarded defensive position. For their own sake, these Hicks soldiers have been involved in road repairs.

Claude suddenly wanted to laugh when he saw the scene, as if these Hicks soldiers were here to learn * * to do good things to help build a national highway in the eastern mountains to the colony of the Gulf of Rodex. At this rate of construction, it is estimated that it will take more than three months to reach the three defensive fronts set up by General Bitchklin in the central mountains, which will allow this rugged mountain path to pass through a four-wheeler wagon with great logistics and mobility...

Or we could use this time to build a road leading to Port Vibato and connect the two roads together after this war... Claude thought so in his head, pulling over one of his captains who accompanied him and asking, "Is that how the Hicks honestly built the road and dragged those four throwers a little further, no surprises, lurking, sending troops into defensive positions for a small probe attack? ”

“Report General, no.” The captain replied: "In addition to building roads and moving those giant, unhealed throwers, the Hicks next set up a very tight security perimeter around where the roads were built. We have fought several night-time wars, all within 300 metres of them. Because all we have to do is reveal our whereabouts, and the Hicks will manipulate those throwers to throw those explosive, powerful projectiles in our latent direction, and that's how most of our brothers lost their lives..."

Claude again picked up a single binoculars and looked closely at the Hicks soldiers in the distance and found that their protective measures were indeed perfect, with three rows of front and rear shields and wooden platoons surrounding the four giant throwers, as well as the soldiers who built the roads. Two light infantry field artillery are firing at those throwers not far from my side of the hill, but more than 600 meters apart, solid bullets either landed on a wooden trailer or rubbed over the cantilever...

“Does it work?” Claude refers to the light infantry field artillery that fired at those two doors.

The lieutenant shook his head with some hesitation: "It's useless, just adding a little trouble to the enemy, causing few casualties, rather than throwing bombs at the enemy at night. And the destruction of these wooden platoons had little effect, destroying ten wooden platoons at night, and the next day they would tow another twenty or thirty.

We were unable to get close to those throwers, and the enemy used these wooden platoons and shield cars as cover and our night assault force circled. It prevents us from breaking through the peripheral perimeter, throwing iron pumpkins with vintage throwers during heavy combat to cover the area under attack, causing a lot of casualties among our night attackers... "

“Have you tried anything else?” Claude asked.

The lieutenant nodded: "We used landmines. On the first two occasions, the enemy suffered some losses, more than a dozen casualties and two wooden platoons were blown up. But the enemy quickly came up with a countermeasure, General, look over there, that's the enemy's mine-clearing vehicle. ”

Claude was curious to lift a single telescope and look in the direction of the lieutenant, and then saw the so-called mine-clearing vehicle. This is actually a wooden trailer, with three meters of wooden arms stretched out on both sides, and a log segment clamped to the ground at the front end of the wooden arm. As Hicks soldiers push forward behind the wooden trailer, the logs in front of the wooden trailer will first roll on the ground to detonate the mines that have been laid. And the debris from the mine explosion will be blocked by the wooden trailer...

This is supposed to be the ancestor of a demining vehicle, very simple and primitive, but enough to deal with the first generation of mines produced in the direct jurisdiction war zone. Although it is a one-time demining vehicle, if it is destroyed by a mine, it will have to be replaced. But now the Hicks are not pursuing speed of attack, and this thing suits their needs perfectly. Claude had to admire the wisdom of the Hicks soldiers and come up with a way to deal with landmines.

Although these Hicks soldiers were all here to build roads, Claude was reluctant to keep them doing good. He ordered that the defensive positions in the forward hills should be blocked normally until the Hicks' giant bulldozer threatened the defensive positions. Claude will not allow his own troops to be bombed blankly on defensive positions, but he will not allow the Hicks' offensive forces to break into front of the defensive front in the central mountains.

While defensive positions in the frontier mountains cannot deter enemy attacks, they can delay enemy processes and times. The Hicks had to threaten defensive positions with that huge thrower to force the guards to evacuate, which would give them more time and energy to build roads to pull out defensive positions along the way one by one.

Claude needed to find a better place to remove the threat from the Hicks' giant, unhealed cantilever throwers, and the Hicks knew that the key to their victory was on these new throwers, so they paid great attention to the hills along the way, sending men up to guard every defensive position pulled out, along with vintage throwers and iron pumpkins, and three or four light infantry field artillery...

It's just that while Claude was searching for the right place to ambush the Hicks, there was a little confusion in his mind. Not the new commander-in-chief of the Hicks kingdom, the young Clario. Is the Marquis de Chirios famous for his best and longest offense, or is this his method of attack?

Put your hopes on these new throwers and move forward so smoothly and slowly that you can reserve three months of grass and armament in the mountain border camps for a time-consuming war of consumption? This seems more like a contradiction between the old man's handwriting, the previous front-line commander who was said to have been removed from his post, and the style of the young Admiral of the Hicks Kingdom, the so-called new sharp, longest offensive...

“Here I think so.” General Albert pointed to the surrounding terrain and said: "Three mountains surround the valley, and the valley traverses the valley. The three mountains are connected high and low, and a defensive position of a connecting nature can be set up. And we can dig trenches from the hillside to the top, and even a giant thrower like the Hicks would never throw a projectile at a defensive position on the hill. Instead, we throw bombs that can take advantage of altitude lag and cover the entire valley of mountain lanes. The Hicks will never cross the line of defense here unless they take these three mountains by one stroke.....”

Nice terrain, easy to defend. Previously, the focus had been on defensive fronts too close to the central mountains. But now dealing with the Hicks' giant, hegemonic thrower, the valley here and the surrounding mountains are indeed the best option.

Claude nodded, "Okay, so set up a defensive front here and fight the Hicks. I just don't know if the Hicks can build the roads here in two or three months, and then spend another six months with us, and I don't know if they have enough grass for their consumption. ”

Claude doesn't care about material consumption as long as he doesn't fight casualties on the force, and he certainly has to fight the Hicks for two or three years. Simply put, the war zone is now a home-grown battle, and if the battlefield is contained in this mountainous area ceded from the Nikanchas, it will in no way affect the economic stability and development of the other eight Overseas Territories, or even contribute to the economy of the Territories because of the demands of war.

By contrast, the strength of the Kingdom of Hicks is about three times higher than that of the direct territorial theatre, the cost of leasing the colony of the Gulf of Rodex alone is high, and the rest, whether eating or drinking, as well as all kinds of armaments, all require a higher price to procure sufficient supplies. Having spent an astronomically numerical sum for this colonial war, the Kingdom of Hicks is now struggling to ride a tiger and can only sustain itself.

If these seven Standing Legions of the Kingdom of Hicks really and directly governed theatres of war haunt this mountainous area for two or three years, make sure that McKid III directly chews all the officers on the front line alive. Providing more than 400,000 people and horses with material consumption for two or three years, or thousands of miles from each other across a silent continent of Nubicia, nothing to say, the treasury of the Kingdom of Hicks will soon be hungry to run the rats...

This is also what Claude always feels wrong about the Hicks' way of attacking them, really fixing roadside attacks like the Hicks do, until they get through this mountain to the Port Vibato colony without knowing it's coming to the monkey months. But the point is that Claude did not find out what the problem was, and the Hicks were not attacking, but moving forward one step at a time and occupying defensive positions on the front line.

General Bitchklin came and brought in a hawk message from the battlefield command stating that the King and United Fleets of the Kingdom of Hicks had not returned to the country, but had arrived offshore in the area of direct jurisdiction and had launched harassing shelling of the port of Vibato, although they had not caused much damage to port facilities. After the Municipal Artillery in the pier area responded, the enemy ship did not continue bombarding, but turned away.

The head of the main field corps of the Rock Regiment stationed in Port Wibato reported that the two enemy fleets were mostly battleships and that several ocean carriers had not been seen and it was estimated that the purpose of the trip should be to harass the coastal areas of the direct jurisdiction's theatre. They also left in a southerly direction, perhaps to Port Patres, under the direct authority of Robisto, to remind the guards there not to be attacked by the King of the Hicks fleet and the United Fleet.

Since the two fleets of the Kingdom of Hicks are mostly battleships without a few ocean carriers, it is certainly an offensive of a harassing nature. Claude, General Bitchklin and General Albert didn't care much, and the three deep-water harbours under the direct command of the war zone, Port Vibato, Port Patres under Robisto, and Port Cobichous under Tilsim, were all manned by a major field regiment of rock regiments and a local guard regiment, and those city artillery cannons were perfectly resistant to sneak attacks and attacks by the King's fleet and the Joint Fleet.

With the exception of these three deep-water harbours, the war-differentiated coastal areas are shallow seas and reef areas, and battleships cannot be approached unless grounded or disembarked by lifeboats, but theatre commands have set up guard posts along the coastal areas, attracting nearby guard units if the enemy wants to land from the coastal areas, enough to destroy the enemy on the beach.

Therefore, in a hawk message from the battlefield command, it was stated that there was no need for the three generals on the front line to rush the matter and that there was already a prep plan for the enemy warships to harass the battlefield command in the coastal zone and that the enemy warships would not cause any loss or injury to the direct territorial battlefield.

On 21 September, Claude received reports from agents lurking in the colony of the Gulf of Rhodex that the Royal Cavalier Reserve Corps, originally on the eastern mountain border, had suddenly returned to the rear General Logistics Base battalion and had been placed in the barracks for rest, reportedly for normal pull training, before returning two days later.

Three days later, agents reported again that the Corps of Light Cavalry in the General Logistics Base battalion, the Royal Cavalry Reserve Corps, did not know when it would disappear. Agents are presumably heading back to the battalion on the eastern mountain border at night, as residents are not allowed to leave the city at night in Rodex Bay City, so the agents have not seen the whereabouts of the light cavalry.

Eat well... Claude thought so, but took out a notebook and remembered this Light Rider Legion. It's not easy to do this long distance stretching with a good fighting force, especially if the entire Legion can get ready for departure one night and leave quietly.

Two days later, on September 27th, Claude received an urgent request from the battlefield command that the Hicks landed in the fishing port town under Amphiston and occupied the entire fishing port town...