Chapter 261 Formation of the Intervention Army
King Roger received the news of the civil strife in Grand Duke Stanek only slightly later than Duke Jonathan.
Before Duke Jonathan sent people to the royal capital, the Grant Kingdom's court had discussed many times whether to intervene in the civil war in the Grand Duchy of Stanik?
There are three continents in the Dawn Plane.
The Eastern Continent is still a dense jungle, occupied by elves and lizard people. It has not been effectively developed and is rarely inhabited.
A large part of the western continent is polluted by the aura of the undead, and dwarves live in the mountains near the coast.
Only the Central Continent has the largest area and the best climate conditions. It is the focus of competition among various races in the Dawn Plane.
Humans occupy the most fertile land in the Central Continent and suppress the orcs in the cold and desolate northern plateau. In terms of strength, humans are already the overlords of the Dawn Plane. If the Holy Radiant Empire united with several magic kingdoms, it would be more powerful than the orcs, dwarves, elves, and lizardmen combined.
It is a pity that there are many internal conflicts among human countries, especially the several magic kingdoms on the west coast of the Central Continent. In order to contain the Holy Radiant Empire, they even colluded with the orcs to jointly contain the power of the Holy Radiant Empire, resulting in the current situation.
The Grant Kingdom is located in the northeastern region of the Mid-Continent, with four nearby human countries bordering the Orc Empire.
The relationship between these countries is relatively complicated.
They cooperate with each other to resist the orcs, and they also conflict with each other and annex territories.
Among the five countries, the three grand duchies are weaker, while the Grant Kingdom and the Lion Kingdom are stronger.
If the Grant Kingdom interferes in the civil war of the Grand Duchy of Stanik, King Ryan will definitely not sit back and watch the Grant Kingdom control the Grand Duchy of Stanik, and a full-scale war might break out.
In terms of national power, the Kingdom of Lane is stronger than the Kingdom of Grant. However, once the army is trapped in the Grand Duchy of Stanik for a long time, it may cause the Grant Kingdom to fall into a turning point from prosperity to decline.
Despite the high risk of interfering with the Grand Duchy of Stanek, King Roger still wanted to send troops to join the war.
Now that the Jonathan family is already very powerful, its development has also reached a bottleneck, putting considerable pressure on the Grant family.
If the Jonathan family is supported to become the Grand Duke of Stanik, the strength of the Jonathan family will inevitably be dispersed and their energy will be concentrated in the Grand Duchy of Stanik. Through negotiations with the Jonathan family, the Grant royal family can also take back part of the mature territory of the Duke of Jonathan to reward military nobles and make the kingdom's internal structure safer.
The Jonathan family can also gain a bigger stage and usher in better development.
In this way, the two most powerful families in the Grant Kingdom will both usher in healthy development, and internal friction will become smaller.
King Roger originally planned to intervene and was thinking about how to persuade Duke Jonathan. Unexpectedly, Duke Jonathan came to the door. The two parties hit it off and joined forces to create issues in the Noble Council. The eldest brother and the second eldest brother joined forces, and the third eldest brother did not object. The issue of sending troops suddenly became very hot and was quickly voted through.
After the House of Lords voted to send troops, the Grant Kingdom began to mobilize.
The first is the army of Duke Jonathan, which dispatches two-thirds of its strength, totaling two legions.
In order to show his support for the Jonathan family, King Roger also dispatched a second-line central army. This army was the Iron Lion Army of Zachary, whom his mother did not love and his father did not love.
Nolan also issued an order, requiring the nobles of the three northern provinces closest to the Duke of Jonathan to jointly send troops and organize them into one regiment. In addition, the five Dukes of Edward, Fox, York, Lorraine, and Duran each sent 4,000 troops and were organized in the same way. For a legion.
In total, the intervention army has a total of five legions. Among them, the Jonathan family has the largest number of troops. It can be said that they are almost all elite, with a total strength of 45,000. The Iron Lion Corps has been renovated, but it is not full strength, with a total strength of 14,000.
The five dukes bordering the Grand Duchy of Stanek each sent 4,000 troops and organized them into a large army of 20,000 people.
The three northern provinces requested 15,000 troops, including 5,000 troops from Lach Province, 4,000 troops from Gedda Province, 3,000 troops from Gascoyne Province, and 3,000 troops from Harland Territory. They were organized into three provincial nobles. Union Legion.
The five legions added up to a regular army of 92,000. The total number of serf troops transporting grain and grass along the route exceeded 200,000.
These 200,000 serf soldiers were mainly drawn from other provinces. Although the four Earls and Marquises of the South did not need to draw the main force to participate in the battle, they did need to allocate food, gold coins, and supplies. Together with the Grant royal family and the Jonathan family, they paid for the intervention army. .
When forming the intervention army, the royal family also issued a special edict, requiring the nobles of each province to draw elites and not to use serf soldiers to make up the number. The royal family and the Jonathan family will strictly check. If the transferred soldiers are unqualified, they will face heavy fines.
When the order came down, it was almost February.
Today there are about eleven thousand soldiers in Harland territory, of which four thousand are new soldiers. Although the recruits had been training for about half a year, they seemed to be well equipped and in neat formation, no different from the elite.
But Richard knew in his heart that these new recruits were just show-offs and could only fight a dozen battles to defend the city.
When encountering a really hard and bloody battle, the recruits have not seen a lot of blood and their psychological endurance is not strong enough, so they can easily collapse.
Originally, the training period for new recruits in the Harland Territory was one year. After completing the one-year training, the new recruits were dispersed and integrated into the veterans. Only with the veterans can the new recruits not panic on the battlefield.
Now that the recruit training has not been completed, the recruitment order has arrived, and Richard can only end the recruit training early.
After receiving the order to recruit three thousand troops, Richard thought for a moment and decided to mobilize the elite to join the battle. After a meeting with the officers below, he decided to take the reconnaissance cavalry brigade, the hot air balloon squadron, the territorial mage regiment, the third squadron of Warcraft Cavalry, the second infantry brigade, and the sixth infantry brigade, with a total strength of about four thousand.
Nowadays, a brigade in Haaland territory has a total of eight squadrons organized and trained. Counting some personnel from the headquarters, the strength is about 1,300 people. Compared with when the brigade was first established, the number of personnel has doubled.
Because a lot of new recruits have been recruited this year, the actual combat effectiveness of the infantry brigade may be a little weaker than on paper.
After mobilizing his troops, Richard took the soldiers from the Harland Territory to Fort Wright to assemble.
Hearing that Richard was participating in the war with four thousand elite troops, Duke Jonathan rushed to Fort Wright despite his busy schedule, talked to Richard in person, and appointed him as the commander of the combined army of the three northern provinces.
Today, there are five nobles in the northern region: three dukes and two earls. Duke Jonathan is the commander-in-chief of the intervention army. The three noble nobles, Edward, Fox, and Martins, will not join the intervention army. The troops will be sent by branch members. As it should be, it was Richard's turn to be the commander.
All the noble coalition forces in Gedda Province must be assembled at Leyte Fort. The province has recruited 4,000 noble coalition troops, 1,000 from Brenner County, 1,000 from Romon County, 600 from Wright County, 600 from Canyon County, and 8 from Heihe County. Hundreds of soldiers participated in the battle.
Richard carefully inspected this batch of soldiers and found that the quality of the soldiers was good or bad, with a small number of professionals and a large number of experienced veterans.
Richard could even see some soldiers in their thirties and forties. Through questioning, he found that although these soldiers had not practiced breathing techniques, they had a lot of war experience and had participated in many orc invasion battles. There were a few who were better than Richard. They have more war experience. The equipment of the noble coalition looked very ordinary, and there were not many iron armors. The officers who lead the troops are rarely direct descendants of nobles, most of them are branches of nobles, and even the second sons of nobles are rare.
Richard thought to himself: "It seems that most of the nobles in Geda Province have no intention of participating in the war. There are only a small number of professionals in an army. Even if they have war experience, it will be difficult to fight in the field with the enemy's elite. But defending the city At that time, relying on war experience and fortifications, ordinary people had the opportunity to kill professionals, so it may not be able to play a role?"
Richard waited at Fort Wright for seven or eight days, and 5,000 troops from Lach Province also came to gather. .
The province of Lach borders the Dukedom of Jonathan. The Jonathan family has a great influence on the nobility of this province, and the soldiers they mobilize are more elite than those of the Gedda province.
After joining the army of the Lach Province, Richard led the coalition of nobles by ship, entered the Black River along the Starks River, and went upstream to the Castle of Saint Fes in the Gascoyne Province. Three thousand soldiers from the province of Scone had been waiting at the Castle of Santa Fe for three or four days.
After passing Santa Fes Castle and walking for more than a hundred kilometers, the current of the Black River became turbulent and it was difficult to sail safely. Richard led the coalition of nobles from three provinces to disembark near Palani Castle.
Duke Edward had already stocked up a batch of grain in Palani Castle in advance, which was enough to feed the coalition of nobles from the three provinces for twenty days.
The next stop is to collect food and grass at Padin Castle in the Dukedom of Fox. This batch of food and grass is only enough for one month.
There were nearly 100,000 intervention troops, and nearly 10,000 tons of food were consumed in a month by eating horses and chewing. Such a huge transportation demand could not be solved by relying on the Grant Kingdom.
If Harland had not invented new alloys, manufactured rolling bearings, used four-wheeled carriages in large quantities, and improved transportation capabilities, half of the military rations would not have been solved.
With today's transportation capacity, only five thousand tons of grain can be transported to the Grand Duchy of Stanik every month. After entering the Grand Duchy of Stanik, the food problem will require the intervention army to find a way to solve the remaining half.
In fact, the interventionist army only had one way to collect food on the spot.
The serfs in the Dawn Plane do not have much food at all, and it is difficult to feed themselves. If they want to collect food, they can only snatch it from the hands of the nobles. When the time comes, the resistance will be fierce.
Richard led the coalition of nobles from the three provinces for fourteen days and arrived at Padin Castle, which was only dozens of kilometers away from the Grand Duchy of Stanik and was already close to the front line.
In order to prepare for the war, a batch of baggage was stored in Padin Castle in advance. In addition, more than 300 craftsmen fought with the coalition forces from the three provinces.
The food stockpiled in Padin City only lasts for fifteen days. Taking into account the ten days of food that Richard saved and carried with the army, the coalition of nobles from the three provinces only has less than one month of food.
The next batch of military rations will be delivered to Padin Castle in twenty days, and the quantity is only 500 tons. Five hundred tons of food seems to be a lot, and 16,000 soldiers can only survive for ten days if they eat horse chews.
Restricted by food routes, the interventionist army could only divide its forces to fight.
Duke Jonathan led the Iron Lion Army with a total of 60,000 troops as the northern front, Richard led the coalition forces of the three provinces with 16,000 troops as the center line, and Sonny Fox, the third son of Duke Fox, led the coalition forces of the five Dukes with 20,000 troops as the southern front.
The northern army was personally commanded by Duke Jonathan and shouldered the heaviest responsibility. He was responsible for defeating the main force of the Grand Duchy of Stanek and attacking the Castle of Lenas.
The main task of the center line troops led by Richard is to attract the attention of the central noble garrison and cooperate with Duke Jonathan in the battle.
The southern front troops have the lightest task and are responsible for containing several other great nobles in the Grand Duchy of Stanik. Among their opponents, there is also a hidden secret of the Jonathan family, so there is almost no danger. Relatively speaking, the food road is also the shortest, and there is no shortage of supplies.
As soon as a glimmer of morning glow appeared on the horizon, Richard and his soldiers had breakfast, broke camp and left the border.
The scout cavalry entered the territory of the Grand Duchy of Stanik yesterday and fought with the private armies of some border nobles.
The reconnaissance force under Richard's command is very strong, including the Magic Hot Air Balloon Squadron, the Lion Knight Squadron, and the Warcraft Reconnaissance Cavalry. Not only can they conduct aerial reconnaissance, but they are also very powerful in ground reconnaissance.
There are no Lion Knights in the Grand Duchy of Stanik, and there is no way to resist the aerial reconnaissance power of Harland's territory.
The Magic Hot Air Balloon Squadron carried telescopes and traveled to several nearby castles for more than 100 kilometers, and they have figured out the enemy's true and false status.
The reconnaissance cavalry brigade is composed of Warcraft cavalry as the core and cooperated with experienced scouts. Its strength far exceeds that of ordinary border barons. Yesterday, it turned the surrounding hundreds of kilometers upside down and captured a lot of tongues.
By interrogating the prisoners and combining the information obtained by the Duke of Fox and the information obtained by the Magic Hot Air Balloon Squadron, Richard also had a general understanding of the enemy's situation.
The aristocratic situation in the Grand Duchy of Stanek is different from that of the Kingdom of Grant. The territories of the four dukes in the country are all in the safe south. The territory is also relatively small, with about 40,000 to 50,000 square kilometers of land, slightly larger than the Earl of Harland, but not as large as the Earl of Martins.
Their strength is not as good as that of the Duke family of the Grant Kingdom. They have only organized a legion, which is equivalent to the four marquises in the eastern part of the Grant Kingdom.
Because the northern defense line was under great pressure, the four Dukes of Stanek mobilized their troops and jointly formed a legion to station in the north to cooperate with the Stanik border guards. Including the coalition of local nobles, the number of troops in the Grand Duchy of Stanik to defend against the orcs exceeds 120,000, which is exactly half of the total strength.
Under normal circumstances, the Linus family has strong control. With less than 100,000 intervention troops from the Grant Kingdom, it would be almost impossible to defeat the main force of the Grand Duchy of Stanek and overthrow the rule of the Linus family.
But when the intervention army was organized, the Grand Duchy of Stanik was already in chaos.
Soraman's rule did not last long at all. In February, he was overthrown by Baldwin and Haldane.
The false peace between Baldwin and Haldane did not last long, and the two soon clashed and fell into a more brutal battle for the throne.
It was already early April when Richard led the coalition forces from the three provinces into the Grand Duchy of Stanik. The civil war between Baldwin and Haldane not only did not end, it intensified.
In less than four months since the death of the old king, the Grand Duchy of Stanik has experienced two political purges and five large-scale battles, consuming more than 40,000 troops.
These 40,000 troops are all controlled by the Linus family. Now, there are only about 60,000 troops left under the control of the Linus family. It is difficult to control the situation in the Grand Duchy of Stanik.
After Duke Jonathan led his troops into the Grand Duchy of Stanik, the coalition of nobles on the northern border had chosen to stand aside.
Even if Baldwin shook hands with Haldane and made peace, he would have no advantage compared to the main force on the northern front led by Duke Jonathan.
(End of chapter)