Black Iron’s Glory

Chapter 562: The Death of Machid III

The arrival of King Avettelli I of the Kingdom of Claude and Breot in the city of San Hiplian in Wangjing is already at the end of October, 10 days after the Storm Regiment seized Wangjing. The news of the collapse of the city of San Hiplian, King of the Kingdom of Hicks, in the last ten days has spread to the countries of the Farea continent, and it can be said that the news has struck all the countries concerned about the war. No one would have guessed that the great kingdom of Hicks, the reigning power of the North, would have fallen so easily...

Marquis Blancat, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Ovillas, is fast on his way to the Kingdom of the Hicks day and night, and his heart is now filled with remorse. At the time Claude made it clear that he was returning to his kingdom to deal with the Kingdom of Hicks, but His Majesty King Frederick I and his Prime Minister, as well as senior officers of the Royal Army, could not believe Claude's statement that the Kingdom of Hicks was not so easy to deal with.

Instead, the King was wary of Claude, the former royal marshal, who seems to be a little easier to deal with today than the Hicks. For both years, the Kingdom has invested its energies and funds in the economic recovery and restoration of the Kingdom's vitality, with little focus on armament building. Upon learning of Claude's restructuring of the Thunder Corps in the North Bay and the formation of a new Storm Corps, King Ting also decided to form two standing corps to strengthen his defense.

It was only Frederie I and the King's ministers who did not think that Claude had mobilized his forces against the Kingdom of Hicks this time to the Kanas Plains. His successful plot to launch a maritime offensive landing campaign attracted the attention of the Kingdom of Hicks and mobilized national forces to the southern coastal zone in preparation for a landing attack in the autonomous territorial military region.

Claude, however, went out of the sea and sometime persuaded the Kingdom of Breot to join the anti-Hicks. Not only did it unravel the national highway, revealing the emptiness of the Kingdom of Hicks, but it also helped the Legion of Thunder and Storm to carry out raids, plundered the city of St. Hiplian in Wangjing, and wiped out the Legion of Iron Guards and the Solem Standing Army in the Kingdom of Hicks.

The collapse of the city of St. Hiplian in Wangjing means that the big picture of the Kingdom of Hicks has been decided. Don't look, there are six more standing legions and eight newly formed reserves on the southern coast of the Kingdom of Hicks, heavily assembled, but they have lost their logistical security and sources of military expenditure. The stockpiling of arms and materiel, ammunition and logistical resupply by the Kingdom of Hicks in the front-line coastal zone is simply not enough to sustain so many regiments for two or three months.

This is related to the militarization of the Kingdom of Hicks, where, in order to effectively control these regiments, all logistics, weapons and equipment are stored in the city of St. Hiplian in Wangjing, essentially once every two or three months. Now that the city of San Hiplian in Wangjing has fallen, all of this stuff has fallen into the hands of the overseas autonomous military districts. Even if collected locally, the eight counties in the south cannot provide so much food and grass supplies for the regiments. Hunger alone can disintegrate these Hicks regiments.

In the Second Eastern War, the kings of the Kingdom of Ovieras were occupied by the Allied forces, but before withdrawing from the kings, the forces of the Kingdom of Ovieras had taken all military materiel and could therefore continue to resist, even retreating to the three southwestern counties. But this time the Thunder Regiment and Storm Regiment of the Overseas Autonomous Territory took over the city of St. Hiplian in King Hicks, but it came with a connecting end, with all the material falling into the net, so that even if the Kingdom of Hicks had so many troops in the southern coastal zone, victory and defeat had become clear.

That's why Prime Minister Blancat rushed to the Kingdom of the Hicks desperately, and he needed to negotiate with Claude to qualify the Kingdom of Ovilas for the war. The Overseas Autonomous Territories must not be allowed to extinguish the Kingdom of Hicks, and what face would it have in the future to govern the development of the Autonomous Territories as a Patriotic Power.

Even though His Majesty King Frederick I and Prime Minister Blancat are aware of this, the Overseas Autonomous Territories do not currently have much ambition. However, for the Kingdom of Ovilas, the Autonomous Territory remains the Kingdom's greatest threat. In particular, the new formation of a third regularized regiment in the Autonomous Territorial Regiment, said to have been used to defeat the Storm Regiment in the Kanas Prairie region, amounted to the addition of an independently armed force in the eastern region.

If the Autonomous Territory were to destroy the Kingdom of Hicks, the ruler of the North alone, the overseas autonomous territories would henceforth prevail over the Kingdom of Auvellas, and the countries of the Farea continent would even choose to deal with the overseas autonomous territories and ignore the Kingdom of Auvellas, something that Frederie I and His Majesty's ministers could not tolerate. Chancellor Blanchard accepted the mission of joining the battle in any case, simply saying that you have to split a cup...

General Albert held a major march in the city of San Hiplian in King King King King King King King King King King Claude and King Avettelli I. Claude discovered that the city defense facilities in Wangjing San Xiprian City were complete, and only after asking, did he know that after the storm army besieged Wangjing, he found that the defense on the city wall was insufficient. He thought that the defensive army had set some traps. After starting to attack the city, he discovered that the real defense was insufficient, so he took down the city wall and the exit of the twelve city gates in less than half an hour.

The real problem was the resistance that followed the invasion of the city, and the Storm Corps took five days of urban alley warfare to occupy the entire city, with heavy casualties. The last guards of the city of Saint Hiplian, King of the Hicks, assembled at the palace for a special death resistance. Finally, General Albert was the base for ordering direct artillery bombardment of the enemy resistance, destroying most of the palace. The remaining guards of the Hicks palace laid down their weapons and surrendered...

“Where's McKid III?” Avettelli I asked.

“Dead.” General Albert shrugged: “Don't blame me, I want to catch him alive, but this old man won't surrender. I can't let my men's generals die for nothing. I could only order the shelling of the old man's hiding palace with artillery, and later, while cleaning up the battlefield, I found his body in half. He's unlucky, the cannon didn't blow him up, but a huge beam smashed right in his waist, splitting him in half..."

McGidd III died like this... the head of this colonial war between the Hicks and Orvillas kingdoms was just smashed to death by the beams of his palace, which was too unexpected... Claude was a little lost. He had envisioned numerous meetings with the king of this paranoid Hicks kingdom to see for himself the frustration of his capture. I just didn't expect him to die in such an unexpected way...

“Show us his body.” Claude said.

So General Albert took them to the lobby of a stonewood building that was probably housed by the royal palace servants. This lobby should be a dining room for royal servants, with greasy floors and dirty walls. But now there are more than twenty coffins in the lobby, and General Albert introduced that the bodies of the faces of the dead in the Hicks' Palace have been gathered here.

“Here are the bodies of three princes, two uncles of Machid III and one eighth son of Machid III. The four bodies over there have not yet been identified, but they are all wearing the general uniforms of the Kingdom of Hicks, two Major Generals, one Lieutenant General and one Admiral. This old lady, who is said to be Machid III's nanny, was given the title Marquis and was killed by gunfire next to Machid III.

This little girl, the seventeenth daughter of MacGruber III, died in the arms of that nanny, from a small piece of shrapnel that hit her back of the brain, fortunately, she died without any pain. Goddamn old man, I don't understand why he didn't surrender. ”General Albert was angry, especially when the dead little princess, only thirteen or four years old, had a bright future and died because of her father's stubbornness.

Claude finally saw McKid III's body, stitched together. There is a dirty screen over it, which curtain cloth should have been cut off. If it weren't for that golden tassel on the outside shoulder garment, it would look like a normal old man in his fifties. But the look on McGidd III's face was so lame that he seemed to be roaring at something. But Claude would rather believe it was the painful look on his face at the time of his death, because he heard that the culprit who had been slashed in the waist had suffered the most, and that the cause of McKid III's death was actually similar to that of the waist slash.

“I was in St. Hiplian City, Wang Jing, when I was thirty-four years old,” Avettelli I remembered watching the body of Machid III: “It was the fifty-fourth anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom of Hicks, and all the kingdoms of the client kingdoms gathered in Wang Jing to congratulate the Kingdom of Hicks. At that time, Machid III was a hero, not a lion king for a lifetime. All the subordinate kingdoms crawl under his throne, and I'm no exception...

The next year he started a colonial war with you, and we all thought that the great lion king would soon get what he wanted. But what we didn't expect was that the invincible Hicks regiment would behave so badly in this colonial war, and that Machid III would always be beaten in the face by you. His burial of fourteen Hicks legions in this colonial war became a joke we were delighted to see.

Even after the end of the colonial war, the Kingdom of Hicks was defeated by your Overseas Autonomous Territories, but it is still an enormous and incomparable giant in the eyes of our client nations. McKid III, on the other hand, became a tyrant, increasingly arbitrary. Because of the failure of the colonial war, he had not even celebrated the fifty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the State. Then, in just five years, he more than doubled the supplies and contributions of our client countries.

It was not until you drove him back after he intervened in the Second Eastern War that I was born with the idea of finding alliances, defeating the Kingdom of Hicks and reclaiming the occupied territories. Blessed be the god of war, you did not disappoint me. I could not have dreamed that I would have seen the body of Machid III in front of me. Even if I die and see my grandfather, my father and my brothers, I can proudly tell them that the Kingdom of Hicks is at our feet... "

The emotional Avettelli I passed away, and Claude and General Albert visited the medical center at the Hicks Palace. There are mountains and seas, wounded storm legions of soldiers everywhere, and a small portion of the wounded brought back by the Legion of Thunder.

“We lost more than 14,000 people in the city.” General Albert said in a heavy mood: "Almost reimbursed a division of our Storm Corps. The city of St. Hiplian, King of the Hicks, is very different from the city of Polyvisia, the kingdom of Nasri, which we last occupied. Although the kingdom of Nasri is the dead enemy of our kingdom of Ovilas, the inhabitants of the city after the occupation of the kingdom have little sense of resistance. But it's different here, even now that we've occupied the whole city, there's still a lot of Hicks fighting back and secretly shooting cold guns at our patrol..."

“How do you handle these things?” Claude asked that he also had some headaches. Anyway, the Hicks kingdom was also a dominant power in the North. Residents of Wang Jing were highly patriotic, had a strong sense of resistance, and were not afraid to occupy the storm army of Wang Jing. Urban guerrilla warfare like this would be difficult for whoever the occupier was.

General Albert shrugged his shoulders: "What can I do but give blood to my teeth and my teeth, and the rebels caught hanging from the side of the road to beware? It's just that the Hicks residents here don't cooperate very well, we can only catch a small group of the resistance, and most of the resistance flee under the cover of the residents here..."

Claude thought, "Well, let General Derivique take the four Hicks Return Regiments into Wangjing on a vigilance mission. Door-to-door searches of weapons and ammunition, such as firearms, do not allow the inhabitants of the city to possess shooting weapons and inspect these concealed spaces in the inhabitants' basements, thus eliminating the possibility of future attacks on our generals.

We can search the neighborhood one by one until we clean up the whole kingdom. When the city is finished, we can conduct an inventory of the entire Wangjing area. All the resistance elements are treated as we did in the Kingdom of Nasri, first finding a place to imprison them and then planning to do so when the situation stabilizes.

We may have to stay here for a year or two and get rid of the danger sooner to ensure the safety of the generals. In a sense, we are now enemies, enemies. But don't forget, we still have eight Hicks Return Corps, and they're our best help. They may not be able to help us destroy the Standing Army of the Kingdom of Hicks, but they are perfect for dealing with these rebels... "

“What shall we do with the Kingdom of Hicks in the future and make its demise our overseas autonomous territory?” General Albert asked.

Claude shook his head, somewhat helplessly: “To be honest, I don't know what to do right now. The original intention was to defeat the Kingdom of Hicks and force McKid III to sign a truce peace agreement with our kingdom, as well as with the Overseas Autonomous Territories. Then our Autonomous Territory took a handful from the Kingdom of Hicks and emigrated the families of eight Hicks Return Division officers and soldiers to the Overseas Autonomous Territory, causing the Kingdom of Hicks a great deal of energy damage and no longer being able to reach it.

But now that MacGruber III is dead and the Six Kingdoms are dead, who do we find to sign this truce peace agreement? If McKid III is still alive, we can also compel him to order the surrender of those six standing regiments in the southern coastal zone, and now we can only prepare to destroy them. I think we should check out the rebels in Wang Jing and Wang Jing before we think about what to do... "

General Albert was somewhat ashamed to say: "It was all my fault that the shelling ordered the destruction of the palace and the death of the old man Machid III..."

“It's not your fault, it's none of your business!” Claude interrupted General Albert: “You did the right thing. The lives of our Autonomous Regiment Sergeant are much more precious than those of this dead old man, and we cannot afford to sacrifice ourselves to capture this old man alive.

And with this old paranoid character, even if we capture him alive, there's a good chance he won't cooperate with us. It's better to die like this. Otherwise, maybe you and I will be humiliated by him. He is the king. If we don't want to be king killers, we can only bear to be insulted by him. It's really good to think that you don't have to feel guilty about this... "

General Albert laughed: "Actually, you're right. I admit to ordering the artillery bombardment because the old man had been cursing us. I persuaded him to surrender for half a day, and the old man hid in the palace and shot at the outside, with nearly 100 guards inside. We launched four strikes, trying to break into the palace for a physical battle, but they were all repelled by intense fire.

The road leading up to the palace gates and corridors was filled with the bodies and wounded of our army sergeant, who had already lost nearly 100 lives. I persuaded those inside to surrender, and the old man cursed and provoked us, saying that we would die as much as we came. As soon as I was angry, I ordered artillery shelling, destroying most of the palace and then surrendering all the surviving guards. They were armed with revolvers and revolvers. No wonder the firepower was similar to ours, so dense... "

Claude had seen that destroyed half of the palace, and indeed, as General Albert had said, there was no other way to approach it than by shelling. The palace is made of stone wood and there is granite on the outside, hiding inside is a fortress. Outside the palace are low flower gardens and grass, unable to provide physical cover to attacking generals. The process of passing through the site is tantamount to being the target of a palace guard, and even if Claude were to command here, he would have ordered the use of artillery.

“All right, this afternoon, General Derivique's four Hicks Return Regiments will be able to reach Wang Jing. You can negotiate with him at night and start the inventory of Wang Jing tomorrow. I am in charge of commanding the Legion of Thunder and the two Mount Breot Legions against the Standing Legions of the Hicks Kingdom in the south and the eight newly formed reserves.” Claude said.