Chapter 1457: Clouds of War (Ⅱ)

If the Fizen naval fleet controls the port, the entire city of Midgard will be paralyzed, and the urban area including the governor's palace and the parliament building will be completely under the threat of enemy warships.

If the Feizhen army took the opportunity to go south from Jotunheim and cooperated with the naval fleet to besiege the city of Midgard, the hundreds of thousands of residents in the city would have only two ways to go, either surrender to the Feizhen, or flee to the south, The result is the loss of the homeland and the end of a crushing defeat.

Sir Nichols and Baron Laval were more worried about the second route of the Fidelity.

The regular army stationed by the Fizen Kingdom in the Jotunheim colony is no more than 4,000 in total, which is similar to the number of troops stationed in the Midgard colony.

Baron Laval is not afraid to engage the enemy on land, but he is really powerless against the wind and waves at sea.

The Kingdom of Fizen has the most powerful naval fleet in the world of Vales in this era, and it is a well-deserved maritime supremacy!

At the beginning of this century, the Holy Ashan Empire tried to challenge the sea supremacy of the Lord Fei, but suffered a disastrous defeat. As a result, the Imperial Navy has not yet fully recovered.

There are no more than a dozen naval ships in the Midgard colony, and most of them are old-fashioned sailing warships. They are very reluctant to fight against pirates and inspect smuggling on weekdays, and they are simply unable to fight against the powerful Fizhen navy fleet.

The only good news is that Fizhen's military has a long history of internal fighting. The navy and army are divided into separate systems, with deep grievances.

The generals of the navy look down on the army's turkey, and the generals of the army accuse the navy of only taking high salaries to pretend to be aggressive. The dirty work is still borne by the army, but the military expenditure is only one-fifth of that of the navy.

The current governor and garrison generals of the Jotunheim Colony are all from the Fizen army system.

The Minister of the Navy publicly declared that he was not interested in the disputes in the Jotunheim colony, and was more inclined to send a naval fleet to protect the kingdom's interests in the Graberen area.

Of course, the Graberen Colony, located at the southernmost tip of the New World, has always been the place where Fizen's admirals get their qualifications.

The infighting among the Fizen military has given the Midgardians a glimmer of hope. At least for now, it is unlikely that the Fizen naval fleet will blockade Midgard Port. The threat mainly comes from their northern neighbors.

In addition to this evil neighbor in the north, Midgard also has a neighbor in the south, which is the colony of Alfheim, which is also under the rule of the Holy Ashan Empire.

Due to inconvenient land transportation, the residents of Midgard and Alfheim seldom communicate with each other, and they usually don't realize that the other party is their compatriots.

Now that the war is about to start, Sir William Nichols finally thought of his fellow countrymen in the south. The third preparation strategy formulated with Baron Laval is to strengthen cooperation with the southern colonies. From the hands of the manor owner of Alfheim, Large quantities of military supplies such as grain, cotton and linen, and livestock were purchased to enrich the reserves of military rations, quilts, and war horses.

The two colonies of the Holy Ashean Empire in the New World, Midgard and Alfheim, have very different natural endowments and have developed different economic models.

The climate in the north is cold and the land is relatively barren, but it is rich in mineral resources and the industry is more developed.

The climate in the south is mild and the land is fertile, but the mineral resources are poor, and the traditional planting industry is more developed.

On the surface, the economic models of the two colonies in the north and the south are just complementary. The northerners come to the south to buy agricultural products and industrial raw materials, and then sell the industrial products to the southern market. This can just give full play to their respective comparative advantages and form a complete trade chain.

Sir Nichols had thought so at first, but his fellow southerners had other ideas, and soon taught their northern brothers a lesson.

The trade team sent by Sir Nichols to the south to purchase military supplies received an unexpected cold reception at Leiden Port, the capital of the Alfheim colony.

Sir Nichols had hoped that the people of Alfheim would sell military supplies at a more favorable price for the sake of their compatriots, but he did not expect that the other party would sit on the ground and raise the price. The local Federation of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Products, an organization controlled by large plantation owners, set ridiculously high prices for the grain, cotton, linen, and livestock that the northern compatriots urgently needed!

You can't afford the money? Then don't buy it.

We can sell it to the Phi people in Jotunheim, and they will bid more!

What? You say that this kind of behavior is spreading "national calamity" and capitalizing on the enemy and betraying the country?

Sorry, as long as you can make more money, who the hell cares what country you are from!

The large planters in Alfheim were born and raised on a continent far away from their mother country. Their feelings for their mother country have long been indifferent. In their minds, there is not even a copper coin in their illusory compatriot friendship or patriotic enthusiasm. value!

In fact, this is no wonder, after all, the two major colonies, the North and the South, do not belong to each other, and they are not even considered a "confederation". Apart from a nominal common leader - His Majesty the Emperor - they have no common interests.

In the eyes of ordinary residents, the relationship between Alfheim and Midgard is the relationship between the two countries. New concepts such as "nationalism" that were popular in the Old World—especially the Far East—are not in the New World. But there is no market.

Going back to a year ago, in the autumn of 1620, when the colony of Yalfheim and the colony of Aquamarine Muspelheim clashed, the Midgardians were indifferent to the sufferings of their southern compatriots, let alone Spend money and send troops to support the Yalfheim people.

Now the time has come to the winter of 1621. There was a fierce conflict between the Midgard colony and the Fizen Jotunheim colony for the magic crystal mine. When the northern residents were actively preparing for the war, the residents of Alfheim also lived their own peace. Day, even glad to have such an opportunity to blackmail the Midgardians, who would not mind taking advantage of the threat of war and the pressure of survival to their northern brethren to make a fortune.

This is the status quo of the New World colonies, grim and realistic.

However, no one expected at this time that this split between the north and the south would soon be reversed.

Just three weeks after Feizhen's lower house passed the bill that was equivalent to a declaration of war, another powerful country in the Vales world, "Aquamarine", also showed its greed and bloodthirsty towards the old "clay-footed giant" of the Holy Ashean Empire. tusks.

On December 4, 1621, Sir Louis Jumonville, the garrison commander of the Muspelheim colony, led 2,000 elite cavalry to set off from Fort Duquesne, the frontline fortress, to unite with twelve gnoll battle groups led by the gnoll queen Alpha. , go north into the Brass Pass.

The Brass Pass is the border between Muspelheim and Yalfheim, and it is also the main road for trade between the north and the south. The Sea Blue Corps brazenly crossed the border, and in fact constituted a colony of the empire's Yalfheim colony. aggression!