Chapter 315 Heading South

Not long after the Goddess' Birthday, Duke of Guise gathered his soldiers and prepared to go south to plunder Duke Isaac's territory.

Duke Isaac and Duke of Guise were in two countries and had always had a grudge against each other.

The Isaac family was originally a vassal of Duke of Guise. Two hundred years ago, they betrayed their monarch. If it weren't for the Kingdom of Grant dividing the border land for shelter and accommodation, I'm afraid the Guise family would have been killed and expelled.

During the turmoil that year, the Isaac family occupied the fiefdom of the Guise family and ushered in earth-shaking development.

In the early years, the Grant Kingdom was not strong and could hardly provide much support to Duke of Guise. The Isaac family often sent soldiers to enter the Duke of Guise's territory to plunder. With Duke Brena winning the Battle of the Dragon Canyon, the Grant Kingdom ushered in rapid development. Not only did it expand a large area of ​​land in the north, but it also established three dukes, Jonathan, Edward, and Fox.

The prosperity of the country brought very good development to the nobles of the territory. In addition, members of the Gis family will join the main army. They will experience a brutal war every three years, which greatly improves their abilities. Now the power of the Dukedom of Gis has gradually surpassed that of Duke Isaac.

With the Orc Empire as a great enemy, the Grant Kingdom dares not neglect it from top to bottom. The cruel environment also forces the nobles to be smart, capable, brave and good at fighting.

Although the Grant Kingdom has been established for 600 years, the army is not seriously corrupted. Now the kingdom's military strength can even be compared with the elite soldiers of the founding of the country.

King Delong has superior geographical conditions than the Grant Kingdom. More than a thousand years ago, he was the backbone of several kingdoms in the northeastern region of the Central Continent of the Dawn Plane. His strength is very strong, and he can even make the Holy Glorious Empire afraid.

Unfortunately, after more than a thousand years of development, the nobles of the Delong Kingdom have formed a powerful interest group, with extremely serious nepotism, occupying all the good positions. The class solidification is extremely serious, and a strict policy of fooling the people and weakening the people has been adopted. The military strength is already relatively average. Even if the border nobles are in a better situation, the soldiers of the Dukedom of Isaac are not as good at fighting as the Dukedom of Gis.

Among the many nobles in Grant, the soldiers of the army led by Harland are the best fighters, followed by the four central armies of the Northern Frontier, followed by the main armies of Duke Jonathan, and then the Royal Guards. These armies are considered the first-class main forces of the Kingdom of Grant.

The combat effectiveness of the armies under the command of the two Dukes of the Northern Frontier, Edward and Fox, is relatively poor. Because of the frequent outbreak of small-scale wars, the soldiers of the Duke of Gis are often trained. In the Kingdom of Grant, it can only be regarded as a third-class army, but even so, it is much stronger than the Duke of Isaac.

In October last year, the Grizzlies moved south and entered the Steven Province in late October. They easily suppressed a rebellion and sent some soldiers to attack Duke Hubble, who provided support for the insurgents.

Duke Hubble is a neighbor of Duke Isaac and is also one of the six dukes in the Kingdom of Delong. Because he is a frontier noble, his military strength is relatively strong. But compared with the elite soldiers of the Grizzlies, the gap is very serious.

After a battle, the Duke of Hubble lost 8,000 soldiers, and even the Duke of Isaac was implicated.

After all, in recent years, when the Duke of Guise led troops to capture slaves, the Duke of Hubble would lead troops to support. Now that there are no reinforcements, the Duke of Guise will naturally strengthen the looting.

Moreover, seeing that the Jonathan family seized the Grand Duchy of Stannic, the Guise family was also very jealous and wanted to take back their homeland for greater development.

However, to achieve this goal, it is necessary to obtain the support of King Grant and coordinate the domestic forces, especially the royal family and several nobles. The key is whether they are willing to go south?

The Duke of Guise communicated with King Roger several times and made great promises before he got the support of the royal family. In addition to limiting the power of the Harland family, the Grizzlies Corps moved south to develop to the south.

With strong soldiers coming to the southern province, the Duke of Guise naturally became more confident.

Just in early January, the Duke of Guise completed the mobilization and crossed the border with 6,000 cavalry and 20,000 infantry.

The Duke of Guise is not as large as the Duke of Harland, with only about 60,000 square kilometers of land, and the arable land is not very fertile, and it cannot support too many people.

Despite many years of development, it only has a population of 1.3 million.

With a population of 1.3 million, it has two infantry corps, one cavalry corps, and one magic beast cavalry brigade. There are a total of 40,000 regular infantry, 8,000 cavalry, and 600 magic beast cavalry. The number of soldiers far exceeds that of Harland, and the military strength is very impressive.

The development of the Dukedom of Guise can be described as militarism, and a large part of the domestic economy depends on robbery.

In this invasion of the Dukedom of Isaac, the Duke of Guise only brought eight infantry brigades, four cavalry brigades, and one magic beast cavalry brigade. The direct army has less than 17,000, and the remaining 9,000 troops are all from the vassals of the Dukedom of Guise, including Viscount Finda, an acquaintance of Richard who has dealt with many times.

For this slave-hunting operation, the Finda family mobilized 800 infantry and 300 cavalry, almost half of the Viscount's private army.

Duke Guise led his army into the Kingdom of Delon. The initial progress was very smooth. They captured two border baronies and captured 46,000 slaves.

According to previous years, they should stop while they are ahead. After all, with a population of more than 40,000, even if some were lost due to various reasons during the migration, if 40,000 intact slaves could be sent to Nolan, they could be exchanged for resources worth 200,000 gold coins.

Excluding the cost of sending troops, the profit is already very considerable.

However, the Duke of Guise did not stop there. In addition to sending a large brigade to escort the slaves, he also sent troops deep into the core land of the Duke of Isaac's territory and took the initiative to fight the main force of the Duke of Isaac.

In order to protect the territory, the Duke of Isaac decided to mobilize all forces and recruited 120,000 serfs to cooperate with the regular army of three legions to fight the Duke of Guise.

Although the combat effectiveness of the regular army of the Duke of Isaac was very average, the recruited serfs had a deep hatred with the Duke of Guise. After all, the serfs of the Duke of Isaac were captured and plundered by the Duke of Guise every year.

Although these serfs were not trained, they were often in high morale when they met the Duke of Guise's army. After several battles, the Duke of Guise had lost 3,000 soldiers.

Seeing that the situation was not good, the Duke of Guise immediately issued an order to retreat, but it was too late and fell into the encirclement of the Duke of Isaac.

After being surrounded, Duke of Guise did not panic, but took the lead in building a camp, and then ordered the Warcraft Cavalry Squadron to break through, attacking the enemy's food storage points on the outside, while trying to cut off the enemy's defense line, and return to the territory to draw more soldiers into the border.

The Duke of Guise chose to go to war on all fronts, and the Duke of Isaac also asked for help from the Kingdom of Delong. Although the country had been peaceful for a long time and the response was slow, it took more than ten days to organize reinforcements, but the Kingdom of Delong still sent three legions to reinforce.

Seeing that the number of enemy troops far exceeded the Duke of Guise's estimate, he had no choice but to ask the Grizzly Legion for reinforcement.

As a border general, William has a lot of autonomy. After receiving the letter of help from the Duke of Guise, William thought carefully and decided to send troops to reinforce.

Unexpectedly, after fighting a few bad battles, he got himself into the quagmire of war.

Seeing that the scope of the war was getting bigger and bigger, the matter was brought to the noble meeting by the Duke of Guise's family.

Rumors spread all over the place, and many small nobles gave speeches at the noble meetings to promote their own ideas, but they had no say.

The ones who could really decide the direction of the noble meetings were the great nobles of the Kingdom of Grant. For example, the Duke of Harland had 27 votes in the noble meetings. In addition, there were three barons, Soros, Bernie, and William. Without considering the influence, the Harland family had 30 votes, equivalent to 30 hereditary barons.

Moreover, the Harland family was the leader of the nobles in the northern border, and could influence a large part of the votes. Often, the proposals jointly promoted by several great nobles could be passed smoothly.

The proposal of the Duke of Gis was like a stone thrown into a pond, which caused countless waves.

Compared with expanding the territory from the north, the nobles of the Kingdom of Grant, from big to small, all wanted to develop in the south. Compared with the Orc Empire, the soldiers of the Kingdom of Delon were much easier to deal with, and the national strength was a little worse than that of the Kingdom of Grant.

Even the land was more fertile.

With the rise of the Dukedom of Harland, the Grant family caught up with the trend, and the national strength of the entire Grant Kingdom has greatly developed.

Now that the conflict on the southern front is so fierce, King Roger has plans to expand again.

Under the joint promotion of the royal family, Duke of Guise, and Duke of Durand, the motion was passed smoothly, and the formation of an intervention army was once again put on the agenda.

Having made war profits several times, Richard's thoughts are now like those of the Showa staff. He is obsessed with making war profits and will not stop it at all. Instead, he actively supports the Grant Kingdom to join the war. The other duchies, except Duke Durand, are not very interested.

The Jonathan family took over the Grand Duchy of Stannic, and their energy cannot be dispersed. The Dukedom of Edward is now facing a handover between the old and the new, and the main members are more sensitive. The Dukedom of Fox was beaten badly by the orcs, and it is difficult to withdraw troops in a short time. The Dukedom of York has fertile land and a large area, and the desire to expand is not strong.

After a few days of discussion, the nobles compromised. The royal family drew two corps from the Central Guards and a second-line corps to serve as the central army. The noble coalition of the four provinces in the northern border and the army led by Harland formed a corps to serve as the left army. The right army was led by Duke Duran and a complete corps.

The three armies together exceeded 100,000, which was the first batch of reinforcements. If the war was not going well, the Kingdom of Grant would have spare strength to send reinforcements.

With the troops sent, the remaining nobles paid money and provided material support to support the intervention army.

Compared with the battle for the throne of Stannic, the intervention army encountered slightly less trouble this time.

The provinces that Richard led his troops to the south were relatively rich, and the stored food and materials were enough for the 100,000 troops. The Grant royal family was also much more generous than Duke Edward, and took out a lot of food to ensure the food supply of the intervention army.

After careful observation, Richard found that there were even a large number of military stations on the way south, and it was not a problem to dispatch troops.

Richard invested more resources in organizing the intervention army this time. There were 6,000 soldiers from Harland who went south, including elite divisions such as the First Battalion of Harland and the Scouting Cavalry Battalion. Three hundred Warcraft Cavalry were also selected. The 13th and 14th Battalions, which had just been formed, also had to go south to participate in the war and accumulate war experience.

The four northern provinces, Geda Province recruited 6,000 soldiers, Rah Province recruited 7,000 soldiers, Gascoigne Province recruited 5,000 soldiers, and Grotta Province was established not long ago, with relatively few hereditary nobles, so only 2,000 soldiers were needed.

Compared with the last time the intervention army was formed, this time the intervention army was very active, the soldiers were almost carefully selected, and the quality of the soldiers was far superior to before.

In the last intervention war, the Northern Frontier coalition suffered relatively few casualties, but the military exploits they won were extraordinary. They not only snatched back more than 200,000 people from Stanik, but also seized a large amount of resources. Military merits, female slaves, and coins went into the pockets of officers and soldiers, and even the nobles received generous rewards.

After the war, the three-province coalition system obtained four baronies. Richard's old leader Sharp, because of his strong support for the intervention army, followed Richard to get a lot of credit, and successfully obtained a baron's territory and entered the Grand Duchy of Stanik to develop.

Now Sharp has two baronies, which can be passed down to different children. As the son of a leatherworker, his life can be called inspirational, enough for countless people to write.

Now the opportunity is once again in front of everyone. The vast majority of nobles support participating in the war, and countless nobles hope to go to the south to develop and leave the Northern Frontier front.

With Richard's order, the Northern Coalition quickly completed its organization. Except for the poor quality of the noble coalition in Grota Province, the other soldiers in this army still look relatively capable.

After the formation of the legion, Richard immediately issued an order to concentrate the cavalry and requisition war horses from the noble officers.

Compared with the last time he participated in the war, Richard's authority this time is undoubtedly greater.

Last time, Richard was still an earl, and it was not easy to deal with the noble officers. This time, Richard has become a duke and has higher authority, which is equivalent to the ancient generals in the previous life holding the king's flag and the imperial sword, and having enough power to execute noble officers who violated military discipline without the approval of the noble parliament.

In addition, Richard led the soldiers to win the battle last time, and the nobles in the northern border had more confidence in Richard.

Normally, it is difficult for the noble coalition to integrate, and the order to concentrate the cavalry will inevitably be resisted and rebounded. However, Richard is a commander with great prestige in the northern border. Although his qualifications are a little worse, his military exploits are very dazzling, and he has sufficient identity authority.

After receiving Richard's order, the noble officers did not dare to neglect it, let alone oppose and stop it. They all brought their warcraft horses to the Warcraft Cavalry Brigade to assemble.

In just one day, the intervention army actually added a hundred Warcraft cavalry, and the ordinary cavalry also expanded by 300 people. Almost all of these people were recruited by Harland's elite troops. They will be returned after the war.