It was already the end of October when Claude and King Avitley I of the Kingdom of Breault arrived at Saint Cyprian City in Wangjing, and it had been ten days since the Storm Legion captured Wangjing. In the past ten days, the news of the fall of Saint Cyprian City, the royal capital of the Kingdom of Hicks, has spread to all countries in the Farea continent. It can be said that this news has caused a sensation in all countries that are paying attention to this war. No one expected that the arrogant overlord of the North, the Kingdom of Hicks, would collapse so easily...
The Prime Minister of the Overas Kingdom, Marquis Blancart, is rushing to the Hicks Kingdom day and night, and now his heart is full of regret. At the beginning, Claude made it clear that he was going back to the kingdom to deal with the Kingdom of Hicks. However, His Majesty King Frederic I, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom, and the senior officers of the Kingdom's Army Department could not believe Claude's words. , everyone thinks that the Kingdom of Hicks is not that easy to deal with.
On the contrary, the royal court was wary of Claude, the marshal of the kingdom who had committed crimes. After all, the current Ovelas Kingdom seemed easier to deal with than the Hicks Kingdom. In the past two years, the kingdom has invested all its energy and funds in economic recovery and restoration of the kingdom's vitality, and has not focused on arms construction. After learning that Claude had reorganized the Thunder Legion and formed a new Storm Legion in the Beibu Gulf, Wang Ting also immediately decided to form two standing legions to strengthen the defense force.
However, what Frederick I and the royal ministers did not expect was that Claude did mobilize his troops to the Karnas Prairie this time to deal with the Kingdom of Hicks. He successfully planned to use sea offensive and landing operations to attract the attention of the Hicks Kingdom, and mobilized all the national troops to the southern coastal areas to prepare to resist the landing attacks of the Dominion Military District.
However, Claude kept it secret and somehow convinced the Breault Kingdom to join the anti-Hicks Kingdom. Not only did they open up the national highway, exposing the empty hinterland of the Kingdom of Hicks, but they also sent troops to help the Thunder Legion and the Storm Legion carry out raids, capture the royal city of Saint Hyprian, and annihilate the Iron Guards and Solem of the Hicks Kingdom in one fell swoop. Standing Corps.
The fall of Wangjing Saint Hyprian City means that the overall situation of the Hicks Kingdom has been decided. Don't look at the fact that there are still six standing corps and eight newly formed reserve corps in the southern coastal area of the Kingdom of Hicks. They are heavily mobilized, but they have lost their logistical support and source of military expenditures. The armaments, weapons, ammunition and logistical supplies that the Hicks Kingdom reserves in the frontline coastal areas are simply not enough to sustain so many legions for two or three months.
This is related to the military system of the Hicks Kingdom. In order to effectively control these legions, all logistics supplies, weapons and equipment are stored in Wangjing Saint Hyprian City, and supplies are basically only provided once every two or three months. Now that the city of Saint Cyprian in Wangjing has fallen, all these supplies have fallen into the hands of the Overseas Dominion Military Region. Even if they are collected on the spot, the eight southern counties cannot provide the food and grass supplies needed by so many legions. Hungry alone can disintegrate these supplies. Hicks Legion.
During the Second Eastern War, the capital of the Kingdom of Ovelas was occupied by the alliance army. However, the troops of the Kingdom of Ovelas had taken away all the military supplies before withdrawing from the capital, so they could continue to resist. , even if they retreat to the three southwest counties, they will not admit defeat. But this time the Thunder Legion and the Storm Legion of the Overseas Autonomous Territory Military Region captured the Hicks King's Saint Hyprian City, but there was a lot of trouble, and all the people and supplies were arrested, so that even the Hicks Kingdom still had so much power on the southern coast. With more troops, the outcome is already clear.
That's why Prime Minister Blancart rushed to the Kingdom of Hicks desperately. He needed to negotiate with Claude to win the qualification for the Kingdom of Ovelas to participate in the war. We cannot let the overseas autonomous territories take the limelight and destroy the Kingdom of Hicks. In that case, as the suzerain kingdom, the Kingdom of Overas will have the face to control the development of the autonomous military regions in the future.
Even though His Majesty King Frederic I and Prime Minister Blancart know very well that the overseas autonomous territories currently have no big ambitions. But for the Kingdom of Ovilas, the Dominion Military District remains the biggest threat to the kingdom. Especially after the formation of the third regular legion in the Autonomous Territory Military Region, which is said to be used to guard the Storm Legion in the Karrnath Prairie area, it is equivalent to having an independent armed force in the eastern region that does not listen to propaganda.
If the Dominion Military Region is allowed to destroy the Kingdom of Hicks, the overlord of the Northland, in the future, the reputation of the overseas autonomous territories will be higher than that of the Kingdom of Ovelas. Countries in Farea Continent will even choose to deal with the overseas dominions and ignore Ovelas. Kingdom, this was something that Frederick I and the royal ministers could not tolerate. The mission accepted by Prime Minister Blancart is to join this war no matter what. To put it simply, he must get a share of the pie...
General Albert held a large military parade in the royal city of Saint Cyprian to welcome the arrival of Claude and King Avitley I of Breault. Claude found that the city defense facilities of Saint Cyprian City in Wangjing were very complete. After asking, he found out that after the Storm Legion besieged Wangjing, he found that the defense forces on the city wall were insufficient. He originally thought that the defenders had set some kind of trap. When the siege started, Later, it was discovered that the troops were really insufficient, so they attacked from all sides and captured the city wall and twelve city gates in less than half an hour.
The real problem was the resistance they encountered after entering the city. It took the Storm Legion five days of street fighting to occupy the entire city, resulting in heavy casualties. The last defenders of Saint Hyprian City, King of Hicks, gathered at the palace to put up a desperate resistance. Finally, General Albert ordered to use artillery to directly bombard the enemy's resistance stronghold, destroying most of the palace. The remaining Hicks Only then did the palace defenders lay down their weapons and surrender...
"Where is Melchid III?" Avitri I asked.
"Dead." General Albert shrugged: "Don't blame me, I also wanted to capture him alive, but this old guy refused to surrender. I can't let my soldiers die in vain just to capture him. I just He ordered artillery to bombard the palace where the old guy was hiding. Later, when cleaning the battlefield, he found half of his body. He was unlucky. The artillery fire didn't hit him, but a huge beam fell down and hit him in the waist. Split into two halves..."
Melchid III died like this... The culprit who provoked the colonial war between the Kingdom of Hicks and the Kingdom of Overas was smashed to death by the beam of his own palace. This death was too unexpected. It's unexpected... Claude felt a little disappointed. He had imagined countless meetings with the king of the paranoid Kingdom of Hicks, wanting to see with his own eyes his depressed look after being captured by him. I just didn't expect that he would die in such an unexpected way...
"Take us to see his body." Claude said.
So General Albert led them to the hall of a stone and wood building that was probably the residence of the palace servants. This hall should be the canteen where the palace servants dine together. The floor is very greasy and the walls are dirty. But now there are more than twenty coffins in the hall. General Albert said that the bodies of the famous people who died in the Hicks Palace were gathered here.
"There are three corpses of princes here, two are the uncles of Melchid III, and one is the eighth son of Melchid III. The four corpses over there have not yet been identified, but they are all wearing Hicks The general uniforms of the kingdom, two are major generals, one lieutenant general and one admiral. The old lady here is said to be the wet nurse of Melchid III and was given the title of marquise. She was killed by artillery fire in the palace of Melchid III. around.
This little girl was the seventeenth daughter of Melchid III. She died in the arms of the wet nurse. The cause of death was a small piece of shrapnel shot into the back of her head. Fortunately, she died without pain. Damn old man, I really don’t understand why he doesn’t surrender. Does he want everyone around him to die to be happy? "General Albert was very angry, especially because the dead little princess was only thirteen or fourteen years old. She originally had a bright future, but she died because of her father's stubbornness.
Claude finally saw the body of Melchid III, which was spliced together. The body was covered with a dirty curtain. It looked like it had been cut from some curtain cloth. If it weren't for the golden tassels on his clothes that were exposed on his shoulders, he would look like an ordinary old man in his fifties. However, the expression on the face of Melchid III was very ferocious, as if he was roaring something. But Claude would rather believe that this was his painful expression when he was dying, because it was said that prisoners who were cut in half were the most guilty, and the cause of death of Melchid III was actually similar to that of being cut in half.
"When I was thirty-four years old, I came to the royal city of Saint Hyprian once," Avitley I looked at the body of Melchid III and fell into memories: "That time was the 540th anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom of Hicks. The kings of the vassal countries would gather in the capital to congratulate the Kingdom of Hicks. At that time, Melchid III was so majestic and majestic that he was known as the Lion King. All the vassal kings were prostrate on his throne. Next, I am no exception...
The next year, he started a colonial war with you. Originally, we all thought that the great Lion King would soon get the results he wanted. But what we didn't expect was that the invincible Hicks Army in our eyes would perform so poorly in this colonial war. Mechid III has been slapped in the face by you. He ruined fourteen Hicks regiments in this colonial war and became a big joke that we love to see.
Even though the colonial war ended and the Kingdom of Hicks was defeated by your overseas autonomous territories, it is still a behemoth and an unrivaled giant in the eyes of us vassal states. But Melchid III became like a tyrant and became increasingly arbitrary. Because of the failure of the colonial war, he did not even hold a celebration for the 550th anniversary of the founding of the country. Then in just five years, he more than doubled the supplies and tributes from us vassal states.
It wasn't until he intervened in the Second Eastern Region War and was driven back by you that I came up with the idea of forming an alliance with you to defeat the Kingdom of Hicks and regain the occupied territory. God of War, you have not let me down. I never dreamed that I would see the body of Melchid III right in front of me. Even if I die and see my grandfather, father and brothers, I can proudly tell them that the Kingdom of Hicks fell at our feet... "
The emotional Avitley I went to rest, and Claude and General Albert visited the medical center set up in the Hicks Palace. The place was crowded with people, including injured soldiers from the Storm Legion, as well as a small number of wounded soldiers transported back by the Thunder Legion.
"We suffered more than 14,000 casualties in the city." General Albert said with a heavy heart: "Almost one of our Storm Legion divisions was wiped out. The city of Saint Hyprian, King of Hicks, and the city we occupied last time The Royal City of Polyvisia in the Kingdom of Nasseri is very different. Although the Kingdom of Nasseri is the mortal enemy of our Kingdom of Overas, the residents in the city had little sense of resistance after the royal city was occupied. But it is different here, even if Now that we have occupied the entire city, many Hicks are still resisting and secretly firing at our patrols... "
"How do you deal with these things?" Claude asked. He also felt a little headache. After all, the Kingdom of Hicks is also the dominant power in the North. The residents of Wangjingli have high patriotism, strong sense of resistance, and are not afraid of occupation. Wang Jing's Storm Legion, urban guerrilla warfare like this will be troublesome no matter who is the occupier.
General Albert shrugged: "What can I do? It's nothing more than tooth for tooth and blood for blood. The captured rebels were immediately hanged by the roadside as a warning. But the Hicks residents here are not very cooperative. We Only a small number of resisters could be captured, and most of the resisters escaped under the cover of the residents here... "
Claude thought for a while: "Let's let General Derivic lead four Hicks Returning Divisions into Wangjing to perform security missions. First, search for muskets and other weapons and ammunition from house to house. Don't let the residents of the city hold them. We have shooting weapons and check sheltered spaces such as underground passages in residents’ basements to eliminate the possibility of our soldiers being attacked in the future.
We can search residential areas one by one until the entire Wangjing is cleared. After the inventory in the city is completed, we can conduct an inventory of the entire Wangjing area. All rebels should be dealt with as we did in the Kingdom of Nasseri. Find a place to imprison them first, and then make plans after the situation stabilizes.
We may have to stay here for another year or two. Eliminating the danger as soon as possible can ensure the safety of our soldiers. In a sense, we are now in an enemy country, with enemies everywhere. But don't forget that we still have eight Hicks Homecoming Divisions, and they are our most capable helpers. Maybe they can't help us eliminate the Hicks Kingdom's standing army, but they are very suitable to deal with these rebels... "
"Then what are we going to do with the Kingdom of Hicks in the future? Will it be destroyed and become a direct territory of our overseas autonomous territories?" General Albert asked.
Claude shook his head and felt helpless: "To be honest, I don't know what to do now. The original plan was to defeat the Kingdom of Hicks and force King Mechid III to sign an armistice and peace agreement with our kingdom and the overseas autonomous military regions. . Then our Dominion Military Region made a huge profit from the Kingdom of Hicks, and then immigrated all the family members and relatives of the eight officers and soldiers of the Hicks Returning Division to the overseas Dominion, which greatly damaged the vitality of the Kingdom of Hicks and never reached its peak again. Until you get up.
But now that Melchid III has died in the battle, and the Kingdom of Hicks is leaderless, who should we turn to to sign this armistice and peace agreement? If Melchid III is still alive, we can still force him to order the surrender of the six standing legions on the southern coast. Now we can only prepare to destroy them. I think we can wait until we have checked out the rebels in Wangjing and the Wangjing area first, and then think about what to do in the future..."
General Albert said with some shame: "It's all my fault. I ordered the bombardment to destroy the palace and let the old man Melchid III die..."
"It's not your fault, it has nothing to do with you!" Claude interrupted General Albert: "You did the right thing. The lives of our soldiers in the Dominion Military Region are much more precious than this dead old man. We can't catch this dead man alive." The old man allowed our soldiers to sacrifice in vain.
And with this old man's paranoid character, even if he is captured alive by us, there is a high chance that he will not be willing to cooperate with us. It is better to die like this. Otherwise, you and I may still be humiliated by him. He is the king. If we don’t want to become king-killers, we have to endure being humiliated by him. Thinking about it this way, it’s really better to die. You don’t have to feel guilty about this... . ... "
General Albert laughed: "Actually, you are right. I admit that I ordered the artillery bombardment because this old man kept cursing us. I persuaded us to surrender for a long time, but the old man hid in the palace and shot outside. , there were nearly a hundred guards inside. We launched four charges, trying to rush into the palace for hand-to-hand combat, but were repelled by intensive firepower.
At that time, the roads leading to the palace gates and corridors were covered with the corpses and wounded of our soldiers, and nearly a hundred people had been injured or killed. I persuaded the people inside to surrender, but the dead old man cursed and provoked us, saying that we would die as many as we came. In anger, I ordered artillery bombardment. After destroying most of the palace, the surviving guards surrendered. The weapons they had were revolvers and revolvers. No wonder the firepower was about the same as ours. It was so dense... "
Claude has seen the palace that was mostly destroyed. Indeed, as General Albert said, apart from shelling, the only way to get close is to charge with human lives. The palace is made of stone and wood, with granite on the outside. It is like a fortress hiding inside. Outside the palace were low flower beds and grass, which could not provide physical cover to the attacking soldiers. The process of rushing through this area is equivalent to becoming a target for the guards in the palace. In this case, even if Claude was here to command, he would order the use of artillery.
"Okay, General Drivick's four Hicks Homecoming Divisions will arrive at Wang Jing this afternoon. You can discuss it with him tonight and start an inventory of Wang Jing starting tomorrow. I am responsible for commanding the Thunder Legion and the two The Breault Mountain Army will deal with the standing armies of the Hicks Kingdom in the south and the eight newly formed reserve armies," Claude said.