Chapter 174 At that Moment

Daily Thought: War is not art.

In the books of human history, war is always given too much legendary color. And the participants of some famous battles, regardless of victory or defeat, have been given too much unnecessary color and meaning by the pens of later generations.

Only when you are in it will you find that when steel and flesh and blood impact and collide in countless shouts, and decide to stay or go for the will represented by each other, the decorations added by later generations with their imagination appear so dry and pale.

The packhorses and crowds of the large group spread from the road on the plain. From the perspective of looking down from the sky, such a team meanders for several kilometers on the simple road paved with loess in the old times, extending to the end of the horizon.

This is the primitive battlefield condition created by the backward productivity and the blank infrastructure.

No matter how advanced the organization and the meticulous plan are finally implemented in this environment, it is like a knight in white who has to fight with the enemy in the mud and water after all. It is inevitable to reveal the ugly form of war.

Once the number of people exceeds a thousand, they will fill the field of vision; once they exceed ten thousand, they will be boundless. This is especially true when such a team marches on a relatively narrow road.

Calvin was standing next to the central attack group team, on a high ground outside the torrent of cavalry and dragoons in the brigade, observing the marching status of the entire army from the perspective of the highest will of the war party.

The troops in front of him, including the logistics support personnel, totaling 161,000 people, are running closely under the organizational structure he set up personally with a seemingly chaotic but actually orderly inertia.

The troops carry a lot of supplies, but in fact they are only enough for a short time. More supplies are being dispatched and assembled from the rear according to the plan, and then rushing to their scheduled battlefield direction, so that the main force he leads can be replenished nearby after the war.

Since the beginning of the war, the tribe led by Calvin has clearly used its cavalry advantage to the extreme.

The vanguard of nearly 90,000 people formed nine legions with 10,000 people as the unit, and three legions were the main attack direction. They were led by Allen Janus, Elvis, and Mars, and they were like sharp knives, piercing towards the long border of the neighboring Principality of Norton in the south.

The elite vanguard troops had already been scattered in the enemy's rear on the eve of the war. With their cooperation, the main force, with the close cooperation of cavalry and dragoons, interspersed and surrounded various local passes, and then launched a short but extremely intense small-scale battle with absolute military advantage.

This was the end of the cold weapon fighting era and the beginning of the emergence of gunpowder weapons.

The gunpowder technology that the southern countries regarded as a treasure was a joke in Calvin's eyes. But he did not rush to take out equal weapons after the southern countries had gunpowder technology, but chose to give the other side a big surprise when the war started.

The small-scale pass was easily captured, and the difficult-to-conquer fortress also fell with a huge roar in front of the prepared high-energy explosives.

As for the real large fortress cities, the lightly armed legions chose to surround them but not attack them, leaving them to the main force that arrived later. Calvin's heavy artillery would let them know what the roar of the god of war was.

Such tactical effects were obvious, and it was a war mode that was difficult for the enemy countries that were still stuck in the era of feudal knights to understand.

Under this mode of targeted attack, the enemy's high-level officials could not even have a clear understanding of their own situation. The front pass had not been lost, but the middle passage and the warehouse in the rear had all been lost.

But the commander in charge of this direction did not wait for the warning from the rear until he died in battle...

The commanders of the royal city could not understand the battle situation they were facing. The border alarm had just sounded, and the troops of the knights in various places who responded to the call had not yet assembled, and the reports of regional losses like snowflakes had already appeared in the eyes of the nobles of the royal city before their flags.

But even these reports were of little timeliness. After being processed by a crude and backward mechanism with unclear responsibilities and powers, they had already delayed too much precious time after being reported to the upper levels.

Inefficient battlefield information was presented on the tables of the monarchs of the southern countries, but it was actually outdated before it was put on the table.

More alarms were not even reported, and they had already died silently in the targeted killing of the vanguard troops.

This was a collision of tactical concepts across the ages, and a tactical thinking that clearly recognized intelligence, timeliness, organizational strength, execution effectiveness and other dimensions, and a unilateral crushing of the understanding of fighting that was still stuck in the farming era of villagers fighting.

For a whole month, the legion soldiers who advanced forward did not even encounter organized resistance during their leapfrog advance. The medieval knights led dozens or hundreds of militiamen, and in the eyes of professional soldiers, they were just a pitiful joke like their lords.

The 30,000 vanguard troops in the central direction, under the command of Allen Janus, ate all the pre-set tactical targets along the way, and even the only remaining large fortress city was deceived by his intelligence and then lost.

Under such a war situation, the function of the headquarters has undergone changes that made Calvin and his staff members laugh and cry:

The expected siege mission no longer exists, but the heavy siege materials in the planned plan are still arriving along with the second-line reinforcements.

The pace of the 150,000 people in the base camp slowed down in this context, and eventually became a mobile logistics support point, and a large-scale circulating military camp that continuously sent out security forces to maintain stability and received the results of the battles in front of the front...

The war continued its pace. The six legions in the other two directions also rushed all the way, strangling the lords' troops that had not yet formed in various places at their doorsteps.

The war started in March and ended in September. In six months, the first country adjacent to the northern continent collapsed under the iron hoof of the tribe. The tens of thousands of royal troops and the powerful nobles scattered all over the place, combined, could not delay the tribe's offensive plan for one more day.

Until the central cluster led by Allen arrived at the foot of the royal city, the other two countries had not even completed their respective war preparations.

The nobles and merchants in the royal city were still reluctant to wake up from the reality of failure as if they were dreaming until the city was broken. It was difficult for them to understand why they had failed so easily when they had done their best.

After the king surrendered his crown and seal, he was imprisoned in the palace and waited for Calvin's trial.

The court nobles who once held power had their wings completely clipped under the clear and definite power takeover plan of the General Staff.

Calvin's policy direction was very clear: bypass these large nobles and point the butcher knife directly at the middle-level nobles of the kingdom. After strangling these real maintainers of the ruling class, the nobles who lost contact with the grassroots completely lost the possibility of rebellion and restoration.

The nobles without subordinates and vassals were like fish out of water, and could no longer make any waves. They could only curl up in the dark corners of their mansions, waiting for their doomsday in hatred and curses...

The northern continent entered the cold season in July, and the increasingly cold environment increased the pressure on logistics sharply.

Calvin was no longer eager to launch an attack on the remaining two countries. Under his orders, the various legions of the tribe began to garrison on the spot, absorbing and digesting the previous results.

The first phase of the war was declared over, and Calvin's eyes shifted from the war to the management level of the army.

A war that is too smooth is a double-edged sword. While it builds the confidence of the tribal army to win, it also encourages their contempt for the enemy and their increasingly obvious arrogance.

Whether it is Allen who is commanding at the front or Calvin's own subordinates, overly optimistic views on the war began to appear among the grassroots officers, and even some legion leaders and middle-level staff officers also vaguely revealed this tendency.

This is the inevitable result of human nature, and it is also a manifestation of insufficient training of the officer team.

Calvin knows this and has been prepared for it. The legion leaders who have not been able to participate in the front-line war in the base camp were summoned and rushed to the front line with the middle-level officers of the staff headquarters under Calvin's order.

Allen, Elvis and others in the front also began to quietly replace the original troop leadership structure after redeploying their troops, with the rotation of the legions from the rear.

The officers returning from the front were transferred to the newly formed staff department and re-studied in the military training brigade beside Calvin.

They will temporarily withdraw from the war and review the previous war from an outsider's perspective.

The decisions of these commanders in the previous wars will also be evaluated by Calvin during this period, and together with their learning results, their future destinations will be determined.

This retraining mechanism is not only applicable to high-ranking generals, but also extended to low-level officers in various legions.

War is a melting pot, and a victorious war is a feast. The law that the capable are promoted and the mediocre are demoted is particularly obvious at this time.

A large number of low-level and middle-level officers with outstanding abilities have emerged in this half-year battle. They will go through the path that their predecessors have walked for more than ten years in a short period of time and directly become the backbone of the army.

It is precisely because of this that the stability and purity of their thoughts must be guaranteed, which is also the focus of the work of the entire tribe at this stage...

It is already December in the deep winter, and the cold air swept down from the north, making the Norton Principality in the temperate zone also covered with silver and heavy snow.

Ibanez, the capital of Mendoza Province, is also the largest port city on the border between the Norton Principality and the Kingdom of Farias.

The prosperity that once benefited from the fur and medicinal herb trade in the north has been completely destroyed by the war.

The once bustling central market and the tax collector's residence had been deserted several months ago and became the residence of homeless people and refugees.

This is not a coincidence. When the news that the king's city fell and the king had surrendered to the enemy came here, merchants and lower-level nobles had already begun to pack up their belongings and flee to neighboring countries.

Count Palio, the lord of the city lord's mansion, showed extraordinary loyalty in this context.

He had been sticking to his post until the arrival of Allen's legion, and then he led the people out of the city under the petition of the elders of the city, using surrender in exchange for the peaceful takeover of the legion and basic respect for the local people.

Allen Janus personally attended the surrender ceremony because the geographical location here has special value for the tribe:

As the southernmost territory of the Principality of Norton, when this city was conquered, it meant that the last flag of the former Principality of Norton was also lowered.

All legal marks of the Principality of Norton have been erased so far. The resistance of the people also quickly disintegrated after losing the last spiritual support...

This place is now the garrison of the legion under Allen Janus. Tens of thousands of soldiers gathered here under his command.

When winter comes, as the only transportation hub within a hundred miles, this is not only the base camp for the legion to repair and rotate, but also the starting point for the legion to attack and advance after the snow melts next spring.

More armor, weapons and winter supplies were transferred here by Calvin, and more soldiers were also moving here to rotate those soldiers who had been fighting outside for half a year.

The logistics supply vehicles transported here from the base camp were continuous day and night, and even ice and snow could not stop them.

The border of the Kingdom of Farias, a hundred kilometers away, was startled three times a day. Knowing that winter was not conducive to the use of troops, they still watched every move here nervously, and were silent and dared not move in the face of the legion's increasing power.

In the hall of the former city lord's mansion, Allen sat alone behind the table under the dim candlelight to handle the legion's government affairs.

In a few months, his identity has changed greatly.

He is no longer the former commander of the Fiery Eagles and an Astartes warrior. Instead, he has unknowingly become the leader of a legion under Calvin with tens of thousands of soldiers and in charge of a region.

The former identity has been completely abandoned by him with his awakening, while the latter responsibility makes this warrior who transcends mortals feel heavy pressure.

The management of the legion is an extremely complex task and a heavy responsibility.

But fortunately, this pressure is still within Allen's handling range, probably due to the information processing ability of the Virgin Mary gland. His body, which has been genetically modified by Calvin, naturally adapts to this complex government work.

He can even have the spare energy to exercise and restore his martial arts for a long time after the high-intensity work every day.

But now he is laughing and crying for the letter he received in his hand.

The tribe's attitude towards the southern countries is very clear, and the monarchs and ministers of the Kingdom of Farias have clearly read this dangerous signal from the increasing size of Allen's troops.

But they dare not fight back.

The tribe's previous offensive, which caused Norton's century-old foundation to collapse in a few months, really frightened these indigenous nobles who had established their country on commerce and lived in peace for hundreds of years.

This can be seen from the situation in the province of Mendoza.

They didn't even dare to take a bite of the corpse of the Principality of Norton, but were willing to wait for Allen and his legion to arrive, watching the legion conquer the entire province, but they didn't dare to move a single soldier.

They fantasized about the non-existent peace, but the endless increase of troops by the tribe made them smell the smell of blood.

The king and his ministers pondered the impending demise in vain, and in the end, I don't know who suggested it, but they actually put the doctrine on Allen:

"You are a dragon among men, with tens of thousands of soldiers and countless armor. You should be powerful in life, and you will be honored with bells when you die. At this time when heroes are competing for supremacy, how can you be the successor of others?"

Allen didn't think much, but chose to send the messenger and Xin together to deliver the letter to Calvin, who was still in the royal city, overnight.

The latter, who was also busy with government affairs, saw this delightful letter from his new adjutant:

"Hey? This thing looks a little familiar..."

Update! Sorry!