Perhaps it was the fierce battle with the Hicks light cavalry. Well, the Nikancha people firmly refused to admit that they suffered a massacre. They only admitted that their 126 scout warriors encountered the Hicks in the process of detecting the enemy's situation. An ambush and surprise attack by two hundred and forty light cavalrymen of the Ks. After experiencing arduous fighting, they paid huge casualties and repelled the enemy. The remaining seven warriors returned with their heads held high...
There was also the camp bombing incident. The defense line guarded by tens of thousands of young and armed Nikancha people, without actually seeing a single Hicks soldier, was blocked by a long row of torches on the mountain road in the distance. As a result, these tens of thousands of armed and strong Nikancha people cried for their fathers and mothers, threw away their armor and abandoned their positions, and fled completely overnight. These two incidents finally made the elders and leaders of the Nikancha people realize the reality, and they quickly reached an agreement with the directly-administered war zone.
However, Claude felt very uncomfortable because General Bolognik and General Skerry of the theater command actually gave the Nikancha people a discount when they reached an agreement with them. Fortunately, the two generals were wise and did not make concessions on the ceded land. They only discounted the amount of two million gold crowns that Claude extorted from the Nikancha people. Just pay eight hundred thousand gold crowns worth of gold and silver ore ingots.
General Skerry explained in the Falcon message sent by General Bolognik that General Bolognik was worried that the bargaining with the Nikancha people would delay time, delay the fighter planes, and delay the front-line defense tasks. After all, the Hicks have already reached the border between the northern and eastern mountainous areas. If they notice the emptiness in the eastern mountainous area and launch a surprise attack, it will easily disrupt the original defense deployment plan and cause unnecessary casualties to the frontline troops... ...
Therefore, after discussing with General Bolonik, General Skerry thought that they could take a step back. As long as the Nikancha people agree to hand over the territory designated by Claude, they can make some concessions in terms of funds, so that the representatives of these Nikancha people who come to negotiate can also have an easy explanation. At least for these representatives of the Nikancha people, they don’t care much about the mountainous territory that will be delivered. Instead, they are very concerned about the funds. At the beginning of the negotiation, they were only willing to pay 500,000 gold crowns...
Claude, General Albert, and General Beachlin were all a little baffled, and they didn't understand why the Nikancha people valued money so much rather than territory.
But in the end, I think that the Nikancha people think that the inland territory they currently occupy is large enough. Let alone five million Nikancha people, they can arrange for two or three times more. Therefore, they did not think that there was anything wrong with the mountainous territory that was handed over to the direct-administered war zone. Instead, it was a wise move for them to avoid the war with the Hicks. There was a direct-administered war zone in front of them. They can live their own settlement life with peace of mind...
But in terms of funds, the Nikancha people understood this. They believed that the land delivered was the price they paid, so there was no need to pay any more wages to the troops in the directly-administered war zone. If the Hicks are defeated, then the soldiers will be rewarded by their own war zone. If they are defeated, they will also be punished by the war zone, which has nothing to do with them, the Nikanchas. The reward of two million gold crowns that Claude demanded was pure extortion.
It is really difficult to get nothing out of the pockets of these Nikancha people. Even if General Bolonik and General Skri gave them a 50% discount and only asked them to pay one million gold crowns, they would not agree. It is said that the maximum payment is only 500,000 gold crowns.
It only took one day to negotiate the delivery of the territory, but it took five days to negotiate the funds. In the end, General Bolognik slapped the table and said 800,000 gold crowns. This was the bottom line. If the negotiation could not be settled, he would get out. Only then did he reach an agreement with the Nikancha negotiators...
The completion of the negotiations with the Nikancha people means that where Claude is now, the eastern mountainous area and the northern coastal mountainous area have become another piece of territory under the jurisdiction of the war zone. The only question is whether this land can be transformed into a new direct jurisdiction of the war zone. , it still depends on the outcome of the upcoming war with the Hicks commanded by Claude. If you win the war zone, you will open up territory for the Kingdom of Orvilas again. If you lose, you will get nothing, and you may have to lose other direct territories.
Claude is quite confident about the upcoming war. It's not that he's relying on it, but he's really sure of it. Regardless of the fact that the Hicks have a total of seven standing corps with more than 400,000 troops this time, it is impossible for them to devote all their troops to the attack. Based on what is currently known about the Hicks' troop deployment, it is obvious that they will use the eastern mountainous area as a breakthrough point for their attack.
The Fombix Gang Hicks people in the rear plains deployed a standing regiment to prevent troops from the directly-administered war zone from sneaking into the rear to sneak into the general logistics base camp again. Two standing corps were deployed on the northern mountainous border to blockade and defend, so that three standing corps could not be committed to the attack.
Although there are four standing legions deployed on the eastern mountainous border, one of them is the Royal Knights Reserve Corps, which belongs to the light cavalry legion. It is a fool to let the light cavalry enter the mountainous area to fight.
Therefore, the Hicks could only attack three standing legions on the eastern mountainous border. After entering the eastern frontier mountainous area, the Hicks had to dispatch a standing army to protect the logistics transportation channels as they did in the last war. In this way, the only thing they can really launch an attack on is the two standing legions with more than 100,000 troops. This strength has not yet been noticed by Claude.
Claude asked the three local garrison regiments that had been withdrawn from the eastern frontier mountainous positions to return to their original territories and positions, while General Beachlin led a division of the Rock Army and two main field regiments to the central part of the mountainous area. The three defensive fronts are responsible for commanding defensive operations. The Thunder Legion continued to rest and wait for the Hicks to launch an attack.
However, this time the Hicks were more patient. In the blink of an eye, June came and there was still no sign of the Hicks launching an attack. According to intelligence sent by lurking spies in Rodex Bay City, the Hicks are also purchasing grain and other military supplies from the colonies on the west coast. The General Logistics Base Camp near Bay City is also continuously purchasing The grain, grass and other materials that arrived were transported to various camps on the front line.
According to the information obtained by the spies, the Hicks are preparing to reserve three months of food and grass in the three camps on the front line. It seems that these Hicks are frightened by hunger and want to be prepared. Even these previous The spies who were in charge of the nominal activities of the Buffalo Trading Company also received another large order of 100,000 barrels of ale, which must be delivered to Rodex Bay Colony within three months...
For theaters and demesnes, the sooner the Hicks attack is launched, the better, preferably until next year. In this way, at least half of the troops in the two legions under the theater can be equipped with new rifles, and more complete and sufficient preparations can be achieved in combat readiness. But as June passed and July came, there was still no movement from the Hicks people. Now even Claude was a little confused and didn't understand what the Hicks people were doing.
To Claude's dismay, even if he dispatched the Wolf Fang Squadron, he also had McJack's 131st Battalion dispatch to ambush the Hicks patrol team and capture many Hicks prisoners, but these were The captured prisoners also didn't understand why their superiors had no intention of launching an attack. It seemed that their arrival was a confrontation with the troops in the directly-administered war zone at the mountainous border.
Another thing that upset Claude and several generals in the war zone was that Colonel Boquear returned to the kingdom's mainland on behalf of the overseas territories war zone and went to the royal capital. He brought a large number of gifts to meet with the new king Sterling XI and convey the war zone's message. I respect you and want to know the royal capital’s views on the war zone and its plan to deal with it. Now more than three months have passed, but there has been no news.
According to the itinerary and time, Colonel Bokoal should have returned. In addition, in the past three months, not a single sea-going ship from the Kingdom has arrived in the overseas territories, which makes the situation very strange. After discussing with Claude and others using a falcon message, General Bolognik decided to send two ocean-going smuggling ships back to the kingdom to collect intelligence and find the whereabouts of Colonel Bolognik and his party...
Even though Claude is worried about what problems his young friend encountered that prevented him from returning to the direct-administered war zone, his main focus at the moment is the movements of the Hicks. Claude personally went to the eastern mountainous border to find out why the Hicks had not launched an attack. However, he had stayed on the front line for nearly half a month and still had no clue.
The Hicks tightened their security perimeter and sent patrols only within a distance of five miles in front of their military camp. If they were ambushed at such a distance, the response of those Hicks patrolmen was to lie down immediately with their guns ready to fight back, waiting for troops from the camp to be sent to rescue them, forcing the ambushed Thunder Legion soldiers to give up their loot and evacuate.
Because if the soldiers of the Thunder Legion came out of the ambush point, they would be easily shot by enemies lying on the ground and cause casualties. If the confrontation continues, we will not be able to protect ourselves when the large groups of people in the enemy camp arrive. Unless the entire Hicks patrol team can be wiped out with the first shot during an ambush, the only choice is to evacuate the ambush point if you don't want to suffer casualties.
Claude, on the other hand, is prohibited from risking the lives of his comrades in order to destroy the enemy. After all, the enemy's advantage lies in its strength, and one must not compete with the enemy for consumption. In Claude's eyes, the lives of his soldiers are more precious than those of the Hicks. This is mainly because the ones who performed the ambush mission were either the Wolf Fang Squadron or McJack's 131st Battalion. Both of these troops were Claude's. The elite fighting force of his subordinates.
If the ambush fails, they can only monitor the enemy's camp. What makes Claude depressed is that the Hicks hold various military trainings behind their own camp every day, as if they are here to conduct actual combat exercises. Claude observed for half a month, but still found no sign that the Hicks were preparing to launch an attack. In the end, he had no choice but to turn back to the defensive front headquarters.
At the end of July, Claude once again received the latest information from the spies lurking in Rodex Bay City. It said that the spies learned from a Hicks logistics supervisor in the general logistics base camp whom they knew. The main reason why the Sri Lankans did not launch an attack was that there was still a shortage of military supplies. They were waiting for the arrival of another batch of supplies in mid-August.
In addition, the army general who commanded the Hicks Kingdom's five shameful legions composed of veterans for the first time to attack the eastern mountains, the Hicks commander-in-chief, Count Norberton Pon Belundi, has been replaced by Melchid III. He was dismissed from his post and returned to his country. The person who took over this commander-in-chief position was another Hicks Kingdom army general, Marquis Clario de Xirios, who was forty-three years old this year.
The spies finally found out the origins of Marquis Clario de Xirios this time, and they learned a lot of information from the Hicks logistics officers. If the old man who was dismissed as the former commander-in-chief was an old-fashioned conservative in the Kingdom of Hicks, then the Marquis Clario de Xirios who took over as commander-in-chief was a representative of the young faction in the Kingdom of Hicks.
It is said that Marquis Clarion de Xirios advocated that the Kingdom of Hicks should learn from the disastrous defeats of the previous three colonial wars, carry out military reforms, research new weapons, and cultivate elite legions. This greatly offended the Kingdom of Hicks. A group of old-timers. However, during the civil strife in the Kingdom of Hicks, Marquis Clarion de Xirios took the initiative to join the war and pledged his allegiance to Melchid III, gaining the trust and favor of Melchid III.
The reason why the noble rebellion in the Kingdom of Hicks was able to be put down in a short period of time, unlike the two kings of the Kingdom of Overas who fought for the throne for three years and reduced the entire kingdom to ruins, was mainly because of this Clarion de. Lord Sirios, the Marquis, played a great role in this. He was known as the most adept offensive general in the Hicks Kingdom. In the late stages of the civil strife, he led a light cavalry regiment and suddenly inserted itself into the rear of the rebel aristocratic coalition. The territory of four rebel nobles was swept across within a month, causing the coalition of rebel nobles on the front line to collapse without a fight, thereby ending the civil strife in the Kingdom of Hicks.
After the war, this gentleman was not only promoted one level in the title, but was granted the title of marquis from earl. At the same time, his military rank was also promoted from major general of the kingdom to general of the kingdom. He became the favorite of King Mechid III. Important minister. This time he was assigned to the mainland of Nubisia to take over the position of commander-in-chief of the front line. It was obvious that Melchid III had high hopes for him, hoping that he could bring victory and glory to this colonial war...
This guy is not an easy opponent to deal with... Claude touched the beard on his chin and thought. The spies revealed in the intelligence that the newly appointed General of the Hicks Kingdom and the frontline commander had completed the handover of duties with the dismissed former commander-in-chief before the end of April, but it was not until the end of July that the spies discovered him. This situation. It was obvious that Marquis Clarion de Xirios knew how to keep secrets and keep a low profile, so much so that the direct-administered war zone never discovered that the Hicks had a new commander.
In addition, the newly appointed frontline commander of the Hicks Kingdom is known as the best offensive general in the Hicks Kingdom, but I don’t know in which direction he will command the Hicks people to attack and what method he will use to attack. These are all things that Claude needs to worry about.
Sometimes Claude envied General Beachkerin's calmness, because General Beachkerin was very confident in the defensive lines he designed and commanded to build, and believed that there was no possibility for the Hicks to break through the defensive line he commanded. .
On August 13, the Hicks Kingdom's Sea King Fleet and Combined Fleet once again escorted a large number of transport ships carrying military supplies and grain to arrive at Rodex Bay Colony. After receiving a tip from spies that the Hicks were transporting a large amount of military supplies to the front line, Claude once again issued a combat readiness order to prepare for the enemy's attack.
To Claude's surprise, the Hicks did not launch an attack until the end of August. The spies reported that the Sea King Fleet and the United Fleet of the Hicks Kingdom had set sail and returned from Rodex Bay. The bays were anchored by offshore shallow-sea transport ships, which were transported from the colonies of various countries on the west coast. When the grain and grass supplies come over, their ship owners will leave as long as they pay the freight or payment for the goods.
What the hell are the Hicks doing? Why haven't they launched an attack yet... Claude felt inexplicably irritated and uneasy...