Chapter 94 About the Army

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Regarding the "army" that he has seen in this world so far, Gawain has only two words: wonderful.

At least within Ansu.

The serious regression of civilization, the low productivity, the division of nobles, and the absolute dominance of high-end military occupations have led to the deformity of the military system of the Ansu Kingdom. This country is a unified whole in name, but in reality Each enfeoffed noble is equivalent to occupying an independent kingdom, and the so-called king is just the most glamorous (and not necessarily the most authoritative) of all the lords. There are no unified professional soldiers in this kingdom, some are just the leaders of various nobles and the knights directly under the royal family in the city of Saint Sunil, and there is no top-down ruling authority for nobles at all levels, similar to classical Europe on the earth" My vassal's vassals are not my vassals." The situation is particularly serious here. Even the many southern families that claim to be directly under the king's aristocracy are only attached to the royal family in the form of covenants, and they only have the responsibility to monitor the southern border, The few obligations of providing information and sending troops in wartime will not obey the king's other dispatches.

The soldiers under their hands are naturally only their own.

Even the soldiers under a viscount belonged to the viscount himself.

So if a big noble needs to fight a war, how can he pull up an army?

Simple, if his prestige is enough, and he has found a good reason for the war, and promised enough benefits for the post-war division, then the big and small lords under his name are obliged to bring their own private soldiers. To help fight, these private soldiers form their own teams, led by their own lords or powerful military professionals sent by the lords (usually the latter, many of the Anzu nobles in this era have fallen to the point of not being able to fight on horseback, and can only use money The level of hiring strong people to sit in the family), when fighting, these "mixed armies" with all kinds of banners, numbers and tactics will swarm up, depending on the strength of the enemy and their own benefits. Pretend to be dead, and after the fight is over, the leader of the team will go to the lord or the king to calculate the benefits of the division.

The result of this is obvious: the entire kingdom does not have a professional army, nor does it have a unified command system and soldier training rules. Each nobleman uses a variety of ways to piece together his own private soldiers. The weapons are not unified, and the military system is not unified. , the logistics are not unified, and even the troops trained by the noble father and the noble son are not necessarily unified - if the relationship between the two is not so good.

In addition to the variety of soldiers, this chaotic military system has also led to a series of other serious consequences: the formation of the army's combat effectiveness is extremely slow, the training efficiency is low, the selection of soldiers is unorganized, the desertion rate is high and scary, and once the army is led If a strong man is killed in battle, the entire team of soldiers is equal to completeness-because they have neither discipline nor knowledge, and all they have learned is to charge with the knights leading the team.

The Cecil family is slightly stronger than other nobles in this regard. As the "Guardian Family of the South" that defended against monsters in the frontier, even if the Cecil family declined, they still retained the habit passed down from generation to generation: more scientific the militia system.

In addition to the regular soldiers (that is, family warriors), another major source of soldiers in the Cecil Land is the trained militia. The family knights train these people recruited from the free people according to the standard lower than the official soldiers. They train soldiers in their spare time, and farm in their busy hours to supplement the shortage of regular soldiers. At the same time, they also use this method to reserve a large number of reserve soldiers for the territory, because there are many people who have received basic combat training. In case of emergency, they must be replenished Regular soldiers will be much easier than other nobles.

And Rebecca's expansion of the scope of conscription and regularization of militia from free people to serfs is the result of further development of this system.

But Gawain decided to take it all a step further.

Taking into account future plans, he needs a professional, professional, and stable army, so he simply canceled the system of separating the militia from the family soldiers, and instead unified all soldiers into a "combat corps". He demanded that all soldiers be systematically trained in a new, uniform way, and announced that they would be paid uniformly.

Previously, the private soldiers of the nobles had no salary. Usually, the private soldiers of the nobles had to bring their own weapons or buy weapons from the lord at their own expense, and even prepare their own food when they went on an expedition. In this case, The reason why soldiers are willing to fight for nobles is because of the existence of "private looting": soldiers can loot on the battlefield and after breaking the enemy's city, and keep half of their belongings for their own use, that is they Soldier's pay.

The situation in Cecil Land is different from other places. The Cecil Landlords of all dynasties will provide soldiers with weapons and equipment on lease, and distribute food as a subsidy for training and delaying farm work during service, but other than that Without any salary, the food is only enough for subsistence.

Of course, Gawain decided to pay professional soldiers, and at the same time announced that Cecil soldiers would permanently ban any private plundering.

And if the soldiers want to get promotion or additional rewards, it is very simple: Gawain also promised to formulate a detailed reference for promotion relying on military merit and various contributions, compared to the previous disorderly and barbaric plundering In the future, the wealth that can be obtained by fighting the enemy bravely or carrying out orders carefully will be more.

This is not a problem, because the Cecil family has always only fought monsters. At most, they fought foreign barbarians in the early years. Their soldiers have no habit of privateering at all, and they have always maintained their allegiance to the Cecil family. , those food subsidies, and all kinds of benevolent policies for families who joined the military. At this time, Gawain just turned the "prohibition of private plundering" into a clear law. Everyone didn't feel it, and even welcomed it: after all, Gawain promised that even if the serfs joined the army in the future, they would be promoted by military exploits. This was not true in the past. A privilege reserved for family warriors.

But the next thing made them feel a little bit: as a retention and extension of the original militia system, Gawain stipulated that all adult men in the territory are obliged to receive basic military training during the slack farming season. It has become universal and compulsory.

This does not mean that everyone must go to the battlefield to fight, but to ensure that the subjects have basic military literacy and can be easily transformed into professional soldiers.

If this point was brought up at other times, it would probably cause a certain degree of dissatisfaction, but at this moment, less than a day has passed since the monster attack, Gawain Cecil's prestige has been unprecedentedly high, and he has personally defended it. The factual incentives created by the camp led to the announcement of this system.

And everyone also thought very much: anyway, I usually contribute to the labor of the lord, and I also contribute to the training at this time. If you think about it this way, there is actually no change, as long as you can eat your stomach.

Besides, if there is a real chance to be selected as an official soldier, then putting on armor and holding a sword is equivalent to becoming a "half-decent person", which is a rare thing for most poor people who have lived in extreme poverty all their lives. The way out, in front of this way out, it is completely worth taking out the slack time for training.

The change in the military system cannot be completed in a day, and the details involved are far from being explained in a few words. Considering the receptive ability of the audience and the complexity of various details, Gawain did not put all his ideas on stage. It was explained above that he only talked about the integration and formation of all the soldiers into "combat corps" and the basic military training before leaving the high platform. As for the real details...then he had to discuss with the two knights and Hetty.

And what he announced today is just laying the foundation. To put it bluntly, considering the current situation of the territory, these things he said are even a bit too advanced-the pioneered land is full of only 800 people. Only 100 soldiers were trained, and these 100 people were actually all the "army" led by Cecil. The size of the army was completely different from the future that Gawain envisioned.

And don’t look at it as only 100, the ratio of the army to the civilians has actually reached the point of madness – one-eighth of the population has been converted into professional soldiers. From the perspective of the ratio alone, it is almost like the words “poor soldiers and martial arts” written on their faces. High In Wen’s impression, the ratio of soldiers to civilians in a kingdom in a state of world peace is usually between forty to one to seventy to one, or even lower, and even in times of war, this ratio will not exceed one tenth— Unless there is a life-and-death battle or a nomadic people like the northern barbarians of the year.

And on his territory, one-eighth of the people are soldiers!

If these are full-time soldiers, it means that almost all the material output of the camp will be used to support one-eighth of the full-time combat population, and all development will be stagnant and social stability will also decline. Therefore, all the soldiers in the territory are not full-time now. They usually train and guard, and when they have time, they have to participate in the construction of the camp and land reclamation work to ensure the abundance of labor.

This made them similar to building a corps, and Gawain was fortunate that the soldiers had no complaints about it.

Part of the reason for this is that more than half of the soldiers are militiamen, which themselves belong to the category of unemployed, and the rest are veterans with extremely high loyalty, and the Cecil family's always strict military strategy also ensures that the family's name The fighters of the past will not become the old and lazy soldiers, which is the current situation.

Even so, the ratio of one-eighth soldiers is not a long-term solution. Gawain's next plan is to find a way to bring in more people and make up for the camp's biggest shortcoming.

If you don’t make up the population, anything you say is just a fantasy. To plan a professional and professional modern army for a camp with only 800 people and a team of 100 soldiers, Gawain admits that even if he opened the coffin at the beginning. When a coffin cover smashed his head without holding on to his feet, he wouldn't have such a dream.

It's just that he must set these frameworks in advance, even if it can only be a framework now - because once a large number of foreigners flood in, it will be too late to do a lot of things. At that time, if there is no mature and stable framework to support it. , all his efforts here will be diluted by those mixed new populations.

After dispersing the meeting, Gawain immediately summoned the camp management staff including the two knights, and this time he also called the farmer Norris, who had been used to the position of "agricultural supervisor" for more than ten days, and Hammer, the blacksmith who had begun to take charge of the steelworks.

(Mom, the transition chapter is so hard to do)