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Chapter 451: Falling short of success, teaching the Nikancha people a lesson and being idiots
Claude slowly sat down, his face becoming more and more gloomy, like a volcano about to erupt. General Albert looked at him anxiously: "Are you okay?"
Slowly letting out the tight breath in his chest, Claude gritted his teeth and replied: "It's okay..."
How could it be okay? Claude felt like he was about to explode. The two pieces of news brought by General Albert couldn't be worse. As long as Claude is given another five days, no, three days, Claude is guaranteed to annihilate the more than 10,000 remaining Hicks in the camp.
It's a pity that he can no longer do this. Claude must calm down and arrange for the Thunder Legion to evacuate as soon as possible. Otherwise, instead of him annihilating the remaining Hicks troops, the Thunder Legion will be surrounded by the Hicks on three sides and face the entire army. Overwhelmed predicament.
Claude couldn't blame anyone for this. No one knew that the third group of troops from the Kingdom of Hicks arrived at Rodex Bay Colony at this critical moment. One of the two standing legions that came happened to be a light cavalry legion. It takes five days to walk from Rodex Bay Colony to the northern mountainous border, but the light cavalry can reach it in only two days, or even a day and a half.
As for General Bichklin on the Eastern Front, he only brought one division of the Rock Army, plus the 131st Battalion of the Thunder Army sent to him by Claude, as well as those Nikanchas, who could defeat the Hicks. The two standing corps with more than 100,000 troops have done their best by dragging the eastern mountainous front for such a long time. Now that all the Hicks have withdrawn from the eastern mountainous area, only one and a half standing legions are left, which can be regarded as a major defeat.
More than half a day had passed since the secret agent lurking in Rodex Bay Colony sent a hawk to the war zone, and then the war zone was forwarded to his side, leaving Claude with only one day at most. Fortunately, this place is located on the border of the northern mountainous area. It only takes two or three hours to enter the mountainous area to get rid of the enemy's pursuit and interception. Claude still had time to clean up the battlefield and bring back the bodies and wounded of all the dead officers and soldiers.
The Thunder Legion still had enough strength to attack the Hicks remnants in the camp. The more than 10,000 Hicks remnants occupying the small mound were already more disabled than the Thunder Legion. With the more than 4,000 iron pumpkins remaining in their hands, they could still defeat the Thunder Legion. Coupled with the civil work, Claude is guaranteed to blow up the entire mound and wipe out the more than 10,000 Hicks remnants. But relying on this Hicks camp to withstand the Hicks' two-way siege and the attack of more than 200,000 troops, Claude did not have the confidence.
If the Thunder Legion had not experienced the previous big melee, and if there were enough bullets, Claude would not mind staying in this camp and clearing out the remaining 10,000 Hicks soldiers in the camp, while fighting with Lai The two groups of enemies who attacked had a duel, and maybe they could give the Hicks some more blood.
It's very simple. The light cavalry regiment rushed over as soon as they got off the ship. Claude gave up if he could still maintain 30% of his combat effectiveness. After more than a month of sea journey, even horses can't stand it. Can the light cavalry army have enough combat effectiveness without their mounts? Perhaps Claude can counterattack and capture a large number of war horses that the Hicks have worked hard to transport.
On the contrary, Claude was more concerned about the semi-standing army that had withdrawn from the eastern mountain front and rushed to the northern mountain border for rescue. Because this half of the standing army was formed by those Hicks veterans, even if the defeated warriors were demoralized, these Hicks veterans would rush forward without hesitation when it was time to fight. Even if they arrived very tired after a long march, it would be difficult for the Thunder Legion to get rid of them if they got entangled with them. Claude had already seen the fighting will of these Hicks veterans...
Who said that the third regiment equipped with new rifles was out of bullets, and the remaining seven main field regiments are now not even able to make up the strength of three regiments. Let the Thunder Legion in this situation meet the enemy's two and a half reinforcements. The standing army has a strength of 150,000 to 60,000 troops. As long as Claude is not crazy, he will not do such stupid things.
After his mood calmed down, Claude gave the order: "Clean the battlefield, pack up, send our soldiers who died heroically home, take away everything that can be taken away, and burn everything that cannot be taken away... ..."
In the evening, Claude was riding on his horse and turned to look back at the burning Hicks camp. The outermost log wall was splashed with kerosene, like a bonfire surrounding the entire camp, with black smoke. Roaring in the sky above the camp, the camp like a flaming mountain can be seen from miles away.
It is a pity that the Hicks set fire to their camping and warehouse areas and other living facilities prematurely. Otherwise, if they were burned together now, the smoke might be able to kill the tens of thousands of remaining soldiers trapped on the small mound. Smoked to death. The whole camp will be burning, but the territory is too large, leaving a lot of space. Although the remnants of Hicks soldiers suffered a lot on the small mound, they could still survive if there was enough backup water. They were lucky.
"Let's go," Claude said to General Albert beside him, turned his horse's head, and led the guards towards the northern mountains.
Fires everywhere in the valley have been burning for three days and three nights, and will continue to burn for several more days. The remains of more than 18,000 officers and soldiers of the Thunder Legion who died in battle will all be burned to ashes and put into urns and taken back to be buried in the Legion's Heroes Hill Cemetery.
It was a small hill near Lanhu Town under the direct jurisdiction of Amphiston. The war zone classified it as a military cemetery and renamed it Heroic Mountain. Regardless of whether it is the Thunder Legion or the Rock Legion, as well as the officers and soldiers of the local garrison, as long as they are martyrs who died bravely in the directly-administered war zone, they will all be buried in this military cemetery for future generations to pay tribute to.
Needless to say this was Claude's idea, which was certainly unanimously approved. It's just that Claude didn't expect so many martyrs from the Thunder Legion to stay at the Heroes Mountain this time. In addition, General Albert lost more than 6,000 people when he commanded the second division to attack the camp for the first time, and a total of nearly 25,000 people died. of soldiers.
The Thunder Legion's attack this time was equivalent to the loss of a division of troops, and there were more than 20,000 lightly and seriously injured people, of which more than 1,000 were retired due to disability. This was almost to the point of breaking out for the Thunder Legion, killing 10,000 enemies and damaging 3,000 themselves. It's just that it's too late for Claude to regret now. If he had known that there would be such a big melee after capturing the second protective wall position, maybe he would have let those Hicks go.
No one expected that the Hicks would be so crazy and rush to fight for their lives, and the battlefield was open. Soldiers from both sides were just like the traditional war mode. They fired guns face to face at a distance of more than ten or twenty meters, and then fixed their bayonets and fought together...
More than 18,000 soldiers died heroically, and nearly 16,000 people fell in the melee at the second protective wall position. However, the previous seven days and seven nights of trench warfare, the Thunder Legion only sacrificed more than 2,000 soldiers. sacrifice.
Of course, the Hicks didn't fare well either. There were more than 44,000 soldier nameplates collected from the scene of the melee alone. It is conceivable that after the Thunder Legion captured the second protective wall position, the Hicks had invested all their remaining troops in the subsequent counterattack, but they ultimately failed.
The lesson Claude learned in this war is that he must ensure the supply of bullets for new rifles. A new rifle without bullets is worse than a fire stick. In fact, this cannot be blamed on his carelessness and carelessness, but the long-term habit of using a matchlock gun made Claude forget that the new rifle is a completely different weapon from the matchlock gun. Common sense cannot be used to infer that the new rifle will be used in a big battle. bullet consumption.
When Claude joined the Blue Feather Legion, the war in the eastern region broke out in the following five years. The soldiers who participated in the war at that time were equipped with matchlock guns, each equipped with gunpowder and matchlocks that could be fired one hundred and fifty times. In fact, many soldiers did not need to resupply guns and gunpowder except for matchlocks for three years, because it was impossible to fire ten or twenty guns in one battle.
In most battles, a soldier can only fire one or two shots before entering into face-to-face hand-to-hand combat. Only soldiers equipped with the Obash Type III standard matchlock gun that can accurately aim and shoot can shoot several times in the battle.
Claude led the troops to attack this time. The 1303rd Regiment, which is the third regiment, was equipped with new rifles. In addition to the 100 bullets each person carried, the Legion Logistics Department also reserved a batch of bullets. , each of these soldiers equipped with new rifles can be replenished with three more bullets. Claude believes that these many bullets are enough to supply this attack.
But I didn't expect that in the end, because of the lack of bullet supply, I suffered such a big loss, causing the Thunder Legion to pay such a heavy price in casualties, and fell short. If the third regiment has enough bullets and does not need to retreat, then even if they only have more than an hour to prepare, they can simply set up a bunker, and then use the continuous fire capability of the new rifle to give those Hicks who are madly counterattacking A harsh lesson...
Claude believed that if his imagination could come true, then the Thunder Legion would not need to pay such a heavy casualty price at all. For the Hicks, it would be a massacre. The harder they charged and the more troops they gathered, the faster they would die.
Loading the arquebus is troublesome, and the enemy can use this time to rush straight in front of you, forcing you to give up the idea of shooting again and engage in hand-to-hand combat with him. But the new rifle fires six rounds in a row. After each shot, you only need to pull the bolt and pull the trigger again to kill the enemy. It is as quick and natural as breathing.
Perhaps it can be said that the process and time of loading and loading the matchlock gun after one shot is enough for a new rifle to fire six times and then reload a magazine. If the matchlock gun failed to hit the target once, then when the charge was loaded and the target was fired again, the target in the first shot disappeared.
The new rifle can completely miss the target and fire again until it hits the target. This may be the biggest reason why soldiers equipped with new rifles consume bullets very quickly. No one will watch the target they aim at escape. Everyone has a mentality of not admitting defeat, so they often waste money on a dynamic target. Several bullets...
It's a pity that there is no regret in buying medicine, whether it is Claude's past life or this life. The only thing Claude can do is to keep this lesson in mind to avoid making the same mistake in the future. Perhaps the supply of bullets for soldiers equipped with new rifles will need to be doubled in the future. After all, it is too simple and convenient to pull the bolt and pull the trigger to aim and shoot.
"General, the leaders of the Nikancha battalion are here again. They still hope that you will distribute the captured Hicks throwers and iron pumpkins to them, so that they can have the confidence to defend the forward mountainous positions... .." Captain Mason Hughes, the newly promoted adjutant, walked quickly to Claude's side and interrupted his meditation.
Claude's original adjutant, Lieutenant Colonel Anders, was arranged by Claude to become the acting commander of the 1304th Regiment, replacing the tragic death of Colonel Jed Walker.
A sarcastic smile appeared on Claude's lips: "Tell them to get lost. I really don't understand where they got the courage to get the Throwing Cavalry and the Iron Pumpkin from me for free. Tell them to come over and buy them with real money. Or get away, so as not to upset others."
It’s just that the newly appointed adjutant, Captain Mason Hughes, hasn’t figured out Claude’s temper yet: “But general, those Nikancha leaders said that if the throwers and pumpkins captured by our legion are not distributed to them, then they will They will be unable to withstand the imminent attack of the Hicks. In order to avoid unnecessary casualties, they can only retreat and abandon the important mountainous areas in the northern frontier, and can no longer provide cover for our regiment... "
"Hahaha..." Claude laughed angrily. Did the leaders of the Nikancha people understand that the Thunder Legion did not enter the mountains to escape and avoid the Hicks? Otherwise, how could it be possible? Will stay here. When those Nikancha people saw that the Thunder Legion had killed so many officers and soldiers, they thought that the Thunder Legion had escaped from a major defeat.
Then these Nikancha people discovered that more than two standing legions of the Hicks had arrived outside the mountainous border, and they complained that Claude commanded the Thunder Legion to attack the Hicks camp and attracted more enemies to them. They had no idea that the Thunder Legion had wiped out nearly two hundred thousand Hicks from two standing legions, leaving only more than 10,000 remaining soldiers.
When these Nikancha people discovered that the Thunder Legion, which they thought was defeated, was escorting more than 20,000 Hicks prisoners and nearly a hundred carriages filled with iron pumpkins. They became interested in these throwers and iron pumpkins produced by the Hicks Kingdom. In the name of guarding the northern frontier mountainous positions, they asked the Thunder Legion to hand over all the captured throwers and iron pumpkins to them to use against Hicks. People are about to launch an attack or something...
There is no way to communicate with these idiots, and these Nikancha people don't even think about whether the Thunder Legion can escort back so many prisoners and transport so many trophies if they lose the battle. Claude did not hesitate to let them have more Roll as far as you can. Unexpectedly, these idiots were still persistent. After being rejected three times, they still came to ask for the thrower and the iron pumpkin, but this time they threatened to abandon the forward position and not provide cover for the Thunder Legion.
This can be used to deceive Captain Mason Hughes, who has just been promoted from the position of civilian officer in the Logistics Department, and to make Claude take a fancy to him and promote him to replace the newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Anders as the adjutant. Captain Mason Hughes got lucky.
Claude met Captain Mason Hughes on the battlefield after the melee, when he was sleeping soundly on top of the corpses of several Hicks. Claude thought he was an officer who died in battle, and it felt strange that no one was taking care of him. When he got closer, he realized that he was still snoring. This was the first time Claude saw someone using an enemy's corpse as a mattress, and he thought the captain was a bit perverted.
However, the soldier next to him told Claude that this captain of the logistics department was on the battlefield for the first time, and he was very brave and his marksmanship was also very accurate. He killed three Hicks veterans with a matchlock, and killed an enemy with a bayonet. At the same time, he also covered the remaining soldiers and eliminated the last five Hicks veterans, with only three deaths and eleven injuries. The price allowed the Thunder Legion soldiers here to withstand the last attack launched by the Hicks.
Captain Mason Hughes is a civilian and is twenty-eight years old. He was a member of the Ranger Division who was expanded into a legion after winning the Second Colonial War, and was dispatched from the Kingdom to overseas territorial war zones. Because he graduated from the Royal Military Academy with a major in logistics, Captain Mason Hughes was assigned to join the Guards Corps as a logistics officer. At that time, he was still a second lieutenant, and his mind was filled with thoughts of making great achievements.
Because he was born a commoner and there were many aristocratic children in the Guards Corps, Second Lieutenant Mason Hughes had no chance to stand out. When the Kingdom's Army Ministry was recruiting new soldiers to expand the Ranger Corps to the territorial war zone, Second Lieutenant Mason Hughes, who was inspired by the performance of the Ranger Division, submitted an application, requesting to be transferred to the Ranger Corps to serve the Kingdom on the Nubisian continent. .
So Second Lieutenant Mason Hughes came to the directly-administered theater like this. Because he was born in a regular military school and was a professional logistics officer, he was transferred to the five newly formed reinforced divisions with the stroke of a pen by Marshal Michele, who valued talents. Inexplicably, he became a logistics civilian officer of the second-line army, was promoted to lieutenant, and became a subordinate of General Albert.
Then a few years later, Lieutenant Mason Hughes, who worked diligently in the logistics department, was promoted to captain and served as the logistics director of the 28th Field Battalion, 1307th Regiment, 2nd Division of the Thunder Corps. In this melee, General Albert organized the first division and the second division's logistics civilian officers and direct service personnel to temporarily form three battalions to fight. Captain Mason Hughes volunteered to go into battle for the first time.
When he first saw the blood and the corpses on the ground, Captain Mason Hughes was vomiting. But he was very adaptable and quickly became familiar with the rhythm of fighting on the battlefield. Although he is a logistics officer, Captain Mason Hughes has strong military skills and has won the trust of soldiers on the battlefield. After the officer in charge of the area they defended was injured and sent down, the highest-ranking Captain Mason Hughes became the supreme commander of that group of soldiers.
After commanding the soldiers to withstand the enemy's last attack, Captain Mason Hughes felt very tired and wanted to lie down for a while. But there was no place to lie down on the battlefield, and the ground was covered with blood, so he simply dragged a few enemy corpses to rest on them. Unexpectedly, he fell asleep as soon as he closed his eyes. Claude thus saw the real scene of sleeping with the enemy's corpse...
Captain Mason Hughes didn't know that he had caught Claude's eye, and soon General Albert came to him with a transfer order, asking him to serve as Claude's personal aide-de-camp to the regiment commander. Just because he had just taken office, he didn't understand Claude's temper, and he had never dealt with the Nikancha people, so he relayed the threatening words of the Nikancha people in front of Claude.
"Let them get lost. If they don't leave, let the guards drive them away. Tell these idiots that our Thunder Legion has never needed their cover, and let them stop being sentimental..." Claude I feel like I can't be serious with these idiots. As the saying goes in the past life, competing with idiots will turn you into an idiot, and then those idiots will use their rich experience as an idiot to defeat you, a new idiot...
But Claude did not expect that these Nikancha people would actually abandon their forward mountain positions and leave without saying goodbye the next night. Claude was really angry after receiving the news. He ordered Captain Mason Hughes: "Ask Diavid's third regiment to take over these positions and tell them that this will be the territory of our theater from now on..." . ”