Chapter 262: Burson Siege 1
In the northern part of Stanik, there are more than one hundred barons and seven viscounts. The noble coalition they formed has a total of 40,000 troops. Because they have been facing the invasion of orcs for many years, their combat effectiveness is also very impressive. Unlike the Kingdom of Grant, there are no earls or marquises in Stanik, only the royal family and the dukes in the south. Several nobles monopolize the channels for advancement and suppress all families that can threaten their status.
Although the small and medium nobles are also very powerful, they are very scattered.
The main force of the northern line commanded by Duke Jonathan is also difficult to supply. After entering the Grand Duchy of Stanik, it also fell into a dilemma of food shortage. In order to avoid forcing the noble coalition to the side of the Linus family, the northern line army did not dare to plunder.
From this point of view, the situation of the northern army is even more difficult.
The province directly under the Stanik royal family has well implemented the order of fortifying the walls and clearing the fields. Although Duke Jonathan conquered some castles, the food he robbed can only last for one month.
Among the three armies, the situation in the southern line is the best, and it can be supplied through the Duke of York. The Dukedom of York is relatively wealthy, with a large amount of food and fodder stored. There are also enough manpower, livestock, and carriages in the territory to transport food and fodder to the front line.
The main opponent of the Central Army commanded by Richard is the coalition of nobles in the middle of Stanik.
There are a total of 16 barons and 3 viscounts in the border nobles in the middle of Stanik.
More than a hundred years ago, the Jonathan family entered the Kingdom of Grant for refuge. In order to prevent the interference of the Kingdom of Grant, the Linus family divided the branch members to the central border area to serve as the first line of defense.
These border nobles have the blood of the Linus family in their veins, and they resist more resolutely when facing foreign enemies.
Moreover, Richard led the coalition forces of the three provinces to invade, and because of the lack of food, they could only snatch it from them. This contradiction is almost impossible to resolve.
After Richard led his troops into the Grand Duchy of Stanik, he directly led his troops to surround the Burson Castle, which was three kilometers away from the border.
Burson Castle was built on the mountain, with a river nearby, and was located on the official road. The castle is strategically located. If it cannot be taken, the food supply route is in danger of being cut off at any time.
Through preliminary reconnaissance, Richard found that the castle had already gathered a lot of troops, with nearly 3,000 garrisons.
After surrounding the Burson Castle, Richard did not rush to attack the city, but ordered the reconnaissance cavalry to attack nearby villages, capture serfs, search for food and fodder, and the craftsmen in the camp commanded the soldiers to cut down trees and make siege equipment such as counterweight catapults.
Despite the lack of food, Richard still waited in Burson Castle for three days.
Within three days, Morgan led the reconnaissance brigade to break through more than a dozen villages, snatched a batch of food, and captured more than 20,000 serfs.
The six nearby baronies were all looted by Morgan.
Seeing Morgan returning with a full load again, Richard stood in front of the camp gate and asked, "How is it, how much food did you find today?"
"Today, we divided our troops to capture four villages, and we only found more than 300 tons of food. Including the food we robbed the day before yesterday and yesterday, the total is only 1,500 tons, which is enough for us to eat for a month at most."
After hearing this, Richard nodded and calculated secretly in his heart.
Now that nearly 20,000 serfs have been captured, Richard can't ignore these people.
Although serfs eat less and consume only one-third of the food consumed by soldiers every day, the total number of 20,000 people consumes ten tons of food a day.
It will take one to forty days to send these 20,000 people back to the Harland territory.
Including the consumption of livestock along the way, 500 tons of food need to be left, and there are only nearly 1,000 tons of military rations left for the soldiers.
One thousand tons of food can only sustain the battle for 20 days.
Not only were the soldiers in the army big-bellied, consuming three kilograms of food every day, but the war horses and pack animals that followed the army also consumed a lot of food every day, which was slightly more than the soldiers.
On average, an army of 10,000 people consumed about 30 tons of food every day. The three-province coalition army had 16,000 people, and the monthly military food supply was 1,600 tons.
Richard and Morgan returned to the big tent together. He spread out the map, thought for a moment and asked: "We captured a large number of serfs, robbed food, and burned houses. Have the enemy's reinforcements appeared?"
Morgan pointed to the map and said: "The reinforcements did not appear. We also found a situation. The enemy was executing the order to fortify the walls and clear the fields. Maple Leaf Village actually filled in the wells, burned the food, and moved the serfs to the rear. When we arrived, it was already a ruin."
The situation reported by Morgan confirmed Richard's thoughts.
Richard stationed his troops under the Burson Castle, originally wanting to surround the point and attack the reinforcements. As a result, the enemy commander saw through his plan and discovered the weakness of the three-province coalition army's lack of food. Instead of sending reinforcements, he began to fortify the city and clear the fields.
Fortifying the city and clearing the fields hit the weak spot of the three-province coalition army, which made Richard passive all of a sudden.
The situation has developed to this point. Richard can only conquer the Burson Castle at the cost of casualties to open up the situation.
To conquer the castle, alchemical bombs must be used.
However, in front of the three-province coalition army, alchemical bombs are used in large quantities. It is difficult for the Harland Territory to conceal the formula of alchemical bombs.
Compared with explosive arrows, the alchemical bombs of the Harland Territory are average in power.
However, the biggest advantage of the alchemical bombs made by the Harland Territory is that they are low-cost and can be used in large quantities by soldiers.
Facing the invasion of orcs several times, alchemical bombs are almost the most powerful killer in the hands of the soldiers of the Harland Territory.
For so many years, most of the troops of Harland Territory have fought independently. When fighting together with the nobles of Black River County, they rarely threw alchemical bombs, at most dozens of them.
Dozens of alchemical bombs can be explained to the Grant royal family.
After all, the Heart of Elements sells alchemical bombs openly, and almost all the great nobles of the Grant Kingdom have more or less stored some.
Moreover, the nobles of Black River County and Luomen County are very close to Harland Territory, and they dare not easily inform Nolan.
In recent years, the nobles of the two counties have benefited from the rise of Harland Territory, blocking the orc army, and the external situation has become safer.
As a qualified noble, the first requirement is not to provoke strong enemies, and the second requirement is not to have too strong curiosity. Exploring the secrets of Harland Territory is undoubtedly asking for trouble for the nobles of Black River County and Luomen County.
However, some of the nobles in the three northern provinces are very far away from Harland Territory and will not face the threat of Harland Territory. Some people have royal blood. If they find any suspicious points, they may have to report to the royal family and Duke Jonathan.
Richard carefully analyzed the situation and deduced it slowly in his mind. After weighing the pros and cons, he finally decided to use the alchemical bomb.
Although the strength of the Harland family has developed rapidly, it is far inferior to the Grant royal family and the Jonathan family in a short period of time. The location of the territory faces the invasion of orcs, and the Grant royal family and the Jonathan family need to play an important role to deal with the threat of orcs.
If this intervention war is successful, the Jonathan family must focus on Stannik. Without the support of the two legions of the Jonathan family, the situation in the north will become worse.
Using alchemical bombs to strengthen the power of the Jonathan family and the Grant royal family can maintain the balance in the northern region and give the Harland family room for development.
Moreover, the value of alchemical bombs is almost immeasurable, and it can increase the combat effectiveness of the army by five or six levels at a relatively low cost. The Harland family can use alchemical bombs to exchange various precious resources with the nobles.
Even after exchanging the alchemical bombs, the equipment advantage of the Harland family will become smaller in the future wars with the Grant family and the Jonathan family. But in the current situation, it is still more cost-effective for the Harland territory to make such an exchange.
After making up his mind, Richard selected two hundred soldiers and appointed a deputy squadron leader of the Harland territory as the commander, escorting the captives back to the Earldom of Harland with 500 tons of food.
Then he ordered the craftsmen to build a counterweight trebuchet and erect it in front of the camp.
The heavy trebuchet has been invented in the Harland territory for ten years, and it has been spread to the orc army for seven years.
Starting four years ago, the orcs used heavy trebuchets in the Grand Duchy of Stannik, conquered seven baronies in one fell swoop, and pushed the border line more than 30 kilometers to the south.
The principle of the counterweight trebuchet is very simple. As long as it appears on the battlefield, it is not difficult to imitate it. In the war of the orc invasion last year, the army of the Grand Duchy of Stannic successfully imitated the counterweight trebuchet, which unexpectedly dealt a heavy blow to the orc army.
So when the defenders of Burson Castle found that the counterweight trebuchet was erected in the camp of the three provinces, their faces suddenly changed.
There is almost no military exchange between the countries in the Dawn Plane.
The counterweight trebuchet, which was used as a secret weapon by the border nobles of Stannic, appeared in the enemy's military camp, which caused a great shock to the enemy.
After assembling the counterweight trebuchet, Richard began the pre-war mobilization.
"The Jonathan family is the master of Stannik. We entered Stannik this time not for invasion, but to help the Jonathan family drive out the traitors and restore their former glory.
We dispatched 100,000 troops for this battle, and we are fully confident and have a 100% chance of winning.
After conquering Burson Castle, we will obtain everything in this castle as the victor, including food, women, and money.
Let us cheer, victory will belong to us!"
After a simple mobilization, Richard found that the mobilization effect was very general.
The soldiers had numb expressions on their faces, and their morale seemed to be relatively low.
Morale is a very volatile emotion.
The morale of an army may be relatively high in the morning, and they can fight bloody battles with powerful enemies.
At night, it may become very low due to heavy casualties. A few cries may cause the camp to whistle, and they will mutiniate and disintegrate without encountering the enemy.
An excellent army can rely on organizational ability to maintain the morale of an army to the average line for a long time.
The organizational ability of the army is actually the key to combat effectiveness.
To keep the organizational ability of an army alive, it needs fair rewards and punishments, logistical support, qualified grassroots officers, experienced veteran backbones, and military discipline that conforms to everyone's simple values to maintain order.
Generally speaking, when guarding their hometowns and their loved ones, the morale of soldiers is often very high and does not need much mobilization.
However, if you want to keep the morale of the army high and dare to fight on a long expedition, you can usually only rely on looting.
Even the army of Harland's territory, which has very good logistical support, had relatively low morale after entering the Grand Duchy of Stannik.
If you want them to fight bravely, you can only promise to let them rob, kill, and rape after the city is broken, releasing the evil side of human nature.
Although Richard also knew that once this gap was opened, it would be difficult to enforce military discipline so strictly in the future.
However, if the soldiers' requirements are not met, the officers and soldiers will not fight bravely at all. No matter how good the words are, Richard knows in his heart that there is no difference between the intervention army and the invasion army.
An army that invades another country can only rely on killing and looting to maintain morale.
There are a large number of magicians in the army of Harland. They are proficient in advanced mathematics. Before the trebuchet was built, they had already calculated the trajectory in advance and erected the trebuchet about 270 meters away.
With Richard's order, the counterweight trebuchets threw alchemical bombs and kerosene bombs one after another.
Kerosene bombs are war materials provided by the Jonathan family. When he was in Light Castle, Richard applied for some from Duke Jonathan.
Duke Jonathan discovered oil and could make kerosene bombs.
Kerosene bombs contain oil, asphalt, rosin, and resin, which are sealed in a clay pot in different proportions.
When launching, the clay pot is ignited in advance. As the clay pot breaks on the top of the city, the flames of the kerosene bombs also splash everywhere.
This kind of flame can burn for a long time. After ignition, it is difficult to extinguish unless it is covered with soil.
Alchemical bombs and kerosene bombs exploded on the top of the Burson City. In a blink of an eye, a raging fire ignited on the top of the city, and a cloud of gunpowder rose.
Rows of soldiers walked out of the camp and slowly approached Burson Castle.
Burson Castle was built on the hillside, with the northwest leaning against the mountain. If you want to attack the city, you can only attack from the east and south.
The east is considered the front, with a slightly better terrain, and a formation of hundreds of people can be deployed in the front. The terrain in the south is dangerous, and the city wall is built on a cliff more than 20 meters high. Simple wooden ladders can't climb up at all. Only a small number of troops are needed to hold the defense line.
Because the defenders have a geographical advantage, the three-province coalition force advantage cannot be exerted. Even if the defenders on the top of the city are not prepared, they are killed and injured by kerosene bombs and alchemical bombs. The siege is still not smooth.
The first echelon of Gascoigne Province held shields and pushed the ladder truck just approached the city wall. A large number of rolling stones and logs were thrown down from the top of the city wall. In an instant, the first echelon of Gascoigne Province suffered more than a hundred casualties and retreated. The casualties they caused to the enemy were almost negligible.
With such an exchange ratio, even if they were exhausted, they could not take down the Burson Castle.
Richard was already the commander of the army, and the army of Harland Territory was also the backbone of the three-province coalition. Of course, they did not need to be cannon fodder and charge at the front line of the siege.
On the first day, the coalition army of Gascoigne Province attacked the city. This army was the weakest among the three-province coalition. If they were weak in the noble coalition, they could only be cannon fodder and had no human rights at all.