Chapter 387: Stalemate in the South

With the arrival of the tenth month of the Holy Calendar in 1993, winter began to fall in most parts of the Kingdom of Ordo, including the capital Jingyao.

"We must put down this rebellion this year!"

In the camp of the Kingdom's army, Princess Catherine said this to her generals with a solemn expression.

All the generals around her nodded heavily.

From the spring of 1990 to now, the rebellion has lasted for nearly three years, and the Kingdom can't afford it any longer.

The end of the year is not far away. After winter, the supply of food and grass will become more and more difficult, which also means that the decisive battle is just around the corner.

They have agreed on a date for the battle with their opponents, the Giles rebels.

The "fight" was proposed by the rebels, and the Kingdom agreed.

It's not that the two sides pay much attention to chivalry. In the past year, the two sides have definitely played tricks on each other many times, detours, sneak attacks, feints...all the means that can be used in war have been used.

The battle line was shifting back and forth, and both sides were like playing tug-of-war, trying their best to win over the other side, but they always returned to the area of ​​Fuger.

When both sides were exhausted, it was natural for each side to gamble their last bit of strength to fight a final battle.

For the final battle, many generals of the kingdom's army were still a little nervous at first, because in early autumn, Duke Vibrun, the largest lord in the east of the kingdom, finally took action and officially sent troops to join Giles's rebels.

This old fox, when Grand Duke Tanlang launched a rebellion, did not stand up like other lords to clearly support the royal family, but only sent envoys to request a marriage with the royal family. After the royal family agreed, he regretted it first, and then made a speech like "Giles has a certain degree of morality" - this was simply a slap in the face of His Majesty the King.

The problem is that after he expressed his support for Giles, he just retreated to his own territory and did not send a single soldier to support Giles. Duke Veblen was an unpredictable and capricious person. If he showed his loyalty to the royal family one day, people would not find it strange.

However, he did have the capital to be capricious. The territory of the Veblen family was located in the large basin in the eastern part of the kingdom, surrounded by mountains and ridges, which was easy to defend but difficult to attack. If troops were sent to guard the dangerous places, it would cost a lot for outsiders to break in.

At the beginning, Veblen wanted to echo Giles in the north and south. He sent troops to attack the territories loyal to the royal family in the east of the kingdom. As a result, the army in the east may be good at defense but not good at attack. In front of the first fortress they encountered, they had an absolute advantage in strength but suffered a bloody head and made a lot of jokes.

Because the terrain of the eastern basin was blocked by mountains, it was difficult to get in and out, and it was difficult to transport supplies. The frustrated Duke Veblen had to send troops to the south to join Giles's rebels.

This put a lot of pressure on the Kingdom's army. Fortunately, since this year, the Kingdom's army's equipment level has been greatly improved, which has prevented the balance of war from tilting towards the rebels.

The improvement of equipment is due to the large-scale purchases of the Kingdom government in the Northwest Gulf. Since the establishment of "Northwest Industry", the production of weapons in the Northwest Gulf has made great progress. Because of the revolutionary breakthrough in iron smelting technology, the blast furnace ironworks built in Arda, Bayerdin and Emden have provided a steady stream of iron ingots for large and small weapon workshops. The craftsmen inside work in shifts, and the clanging sound of ironmaking continues day and night. Swords, spears, arrows, and armors gather from various territories to Fulan Port, and then are loaded onto ships along with other purchased materials of the Kingdom government such as food, canned food, cloth or ready-made clothes, and transported to ports directly controlled by the Southern Kingdom government, and finally transported to the front line to arm batches of new soldiers or replace the damaged old equipment on the veterans.

Due to the stimulation of a large number of orders, other territories in the Northwest Gulf have also seen the emergence of Alda-style workshops. The benefits have prompted people to actively seek all ways to increase production.

Weapon suppliers in other places are very jealous, but there is no way. Under the same quality, weapons in the Northwest Gulf are always the cheapest, so the royal government always gives priority to placing orders with Northwest Industry.

Under such an impact, weapon manufacturers in other places are forced to take the high-end route - abandoning the production of ordinary iron armor and focusing on the production of plate armor, which is sold to knights and generals of all sizes.

Unlike ordinary iron armor, which is mainly made of wrought iron and equipped to big soldiers, plate armor is made of steel plates, and the time spent is even more different. A workshop of 26 people can process nearly 1,600 sets of armor in 5 months, but a full set of high-end and high-quality plate armor requires less than half a year to polish, which is very time-consuming from beginning to end, especially small pieces such as gloves. They need to be polished separately by hand, and the error requirements are also very high, otherwise it is likely to cause inconvenience to the wearer.

With the general craftsmanship level of the Northwest Gulf craftsmen, they are not yet able to produce such high-end goods with a surface smooth enough to reflect a person's shadow and that can be regarded as works of art in all aspects, but they have achieved a real monopoly in low-end armor.

With the help of cheap but quality- and quantity-guaranteed weapons supplies, the kingdom has formed a huge army. Currently, the army confronting the rebels in the south has a size of more than 70,000, of which nearly 50,000 soldiers can be used for front-line combat.

Catherine and her generals attach great importance to the protection of the lower-level soldiers. The better the protection of the soldiers, the higher their survival rate. The combat experience of veterans who have experienced life-and-death battles is precious.

Another general was annoyed that such a powerful force should have been able to destroy the rebels like a rotten wood, but the war did not go so smoothly.

Veblen's joining was not the main reason. What really gave them a headache was a mysterious army in the rebels. In the mouths of the captives, this rebel army was called the "Immortal Army".

Just as its name suggests, this army always appeared on the battlefield with exactly 6,000 people, no more and no less. No matter how much they lost in the last battle, they always appeared in the next battle with exactly 6,000 people, as if no one had died.

No mistakes in one song, one post, one content, one book, one bar, one 6, one 9!

Of course, no one thought they were really immortal or could come back to life. What puzzled everyone was how the other side could quickly replenish them, because the soldiers of this army were so different—infinitely strong and fearless of death. They were definitely not ordinary soldiers who ate black bread and rarely ate meat and could be replaced by training for a few days.

What was even more exaggerated was that according to the records on the battlefield, these guys were extremely brutal on the battlefield. Some soldiers even witnessed the terrible scene of them tearing the flesh and blood of the people they were fighting against. They were simply a group of beasts that obeyed orders.

Fortunately, compared with this special force, the other rebel forces were not so terrible. Only the elite troops could wear iron armor, and the general troops could only wear leather armor. As for the cannon fodder that had just been pulled in, they didn't even have a decent piece of protective gear, which was far from the large amount of iron armor equipped by the kingdom's army.

The so-called "immortal army" could only be attributed to the "rebel wizard" that had spread in the military camp.