After solving some reform problems of official institutions, Marin turned his attention to the army and decided to restructure the army...
Frankly speaking, the size of the 10,000 regular standing army that Marin currently retains is outstanding among European counties. Even most duchies do not have such a scale. Even some kingdoms usually do not have a standing army of 10,000. For example, the Kingdom of Portugal usually has only five or six thousand standing troops. Only in wartime will it temporarily expand.
Not only that, in addition to the 10,000 regular standing army, East Frisia currently retains 7,000 reserve troops. Usually during the slack season, the 7,000 reserve troops often gather for training without relaxing for a moment.
The combined size of the 17,000 army, coupled with the defeat of the more than 20,000 troops of Saxony, made the neighbors of East Frisia feel very frightened and disturbed.
As a result, many vassal states close to East Frisia have put forward their opinions to the Imperial Parliament, asking Marin to disband the huge standing army, so that the neighbors can "breathe a sigh of relief". After all, it is too scary to maintain 10,000 standing troops and 7,000 second-line troops in a small uncle country with a size of 3,000 square kilometers.
It just so happened that when Marin was undergoing institutional reforms, the Worms Imperial Council sent an official letter asking Marin not to keep so many standing troops during peacetime to avoid misunderstandings.
Although Marin was not afraid of the Imperial Council, after thinking about it again and again, he didn't want to offend the Imperial Council. You know, the Reichstag is the collective will of the princes of all Germany. Although the emperor also has his own mouthpiece in it, he does not have the upper hand.
The most important thing is that even if Maximilian I wanted to make a voice in the Imperial Parliament, he needed to unite many nobles from the Saxon and Swabian families to achieve his goal.
But now, Saxony and Marin have long been feuding. Even if the emperor wanted to support Marin in the Imperial Parliament, he could not get the support of the Saxon nobles. Moreover, in order to appease the Saxon nobles and win their support, most of the emperor's forces abstained from voting on this resolution, to show their neutral position between the Saxon nobles and Marin.
The emperor had abstained from power, and most of the princes were opponents of the emperor, so the resolution was passed easily...
Although Marin obtained the legal status of the Earl Country, he has not been able to send his legal representative in the Imperial Parliament. As for the reason, it is also very simple-most members of the Imperial Parliament disagree.
The princes knew deeply that Marin belonged to the emperor's faction. If it is absorbed into the imperial parliament, it is equivalent to adding one vote to the emperor. Therefore, although the Imperial Parliament did not veto Marin's intention to become the Earl of the Empire, it rejected the Count of East Frisia as a full member of the Imperial Parliament. Therefore, Marin also passively accepted this resolution without knowing it in advance. Even if the emperor sent someone to tell him the news in advance, it would not help. Because, when the Imperial Parliament was quarreling, he had no idea...
Marin could also rudely reject the decision of the Imperial Council, but that would come at a price. Although it is very unlikely that the members of the Imperial Parliament will unite to beat Marin, Marin still does not want to see such a thing happen. Moreover, even if he is not beaten by a group, Marin is worried about being economically sanctioned. Therefore, Marin had to make a compromise.
However, Marin is not happy to disband the 10,000 regular army that has just been trained and keep only a small part. After all, it is easy to disband the army, but it is difficult to regroup the elite soldiers.
After all, as a veteran with great battle experience, he is very welcome in this era of endless wars. Marin dismissed those veterans on the front foot, and there may be other forces on the back foot to win over these veterans...
Moreover, these veterans have all received Marin's modern military training. Once they leave and are hired away, the training methods in the Marin army will also spread on a large scale. At that time, everyone will be modernized, how can Marin maintain its military advantage? Even though the Spaniards and Teutons had come to study the "Marin Phalanx", Marin only explained the problems of the Phalanx to them in detail, but did not emphasize to them the importance of modern military training. Therefore, what they learned was mainly the method of using the Spanish square, not the full set.
Therefore, in any case, Marin was unwilling to dismiss most of the soldiers. Especially those smart officers, Marin is not willing to lose.
Those veterans were recruited, and they may not understand the importance of modern military discipline. But those officers were lured away, even if they didn't understand the reason, they could perfectly replicate modern military training.
The problem is that Marin now has to keep all his subordinates on the one hand, and on the other hand, he has to give an account to the Imperial Council on the surface...
So, after thinking hard, Marin finally came up with a way to fool the Imperial Parliament...
That is, forming a company and digesting most of the soldiers. Change their identities from regular soldiers on the surface to mercenaries under the company...
This trick was naturally learned from the British and Dutch East India Companies of later generations. These two East India companies are both pioneers in the colonization of the East by the two countries. In name, they do not belong to the official institutions of the two countries, but private institutions.
However, the East India Company in both countries has a large number of troops. The number of mercenaries that the British East India Company ruled India in the later period reached an astonishing two to three hundred thousand people. The number of mercenaries of the Dutch East India Company is also more than 10,000.
Therefore, Marin's plan is to transfer the "organizational relationship" of most of the soldiers to this company on the surface, so that the number of the standing army of the Counties of East Frisia on the surface will be reduced to 2 phalanxes, with a total of 2,500 people. And the other 7,500 people, on the surface, became the armed forces of private companies...
The company's name, Marin, had already plagiarized it—Blackwater Company. Its logo also follows the black bear paw of the early Blackwater Company...
After everything was done, Marin signed an order to establish a private armed contracting company - Blackwater Company, and transferred the relationship of 7,500 soldiers to the company. Of course, their titles and fiefdoms in the Counties of East Frisia were all retained. It's just that, when it came to the public, they claimed to be employees of the Blackwater Company. Internally, nothing has changed.
As for the company's shareholders, Marin fabricated a few names casually and registered them. But in fact, several major shareholders are their own trumpet aliases. In addition, several senior generals, such as Schwartz and Frundsberg, also each hold 1% of the dry shares in the company. They only have the right to pay dividends and cannot cash out, and they have no right to speak.
As for the five major shareholders, in addition to Marin's public name, the other four "small accounts", Marin selected four puppets as representatives, and pretended to attend the meeting and pretend to be shareholders. But in essence, the only job of these four so-called "shareholders" when attending the shareholders' meeting is to raise their hands to agree with all the decisions of the largest shareholder Marin, and then applaud...
Then, Marin divided the army. Schwartz still served as the senior general of the East Frisian army, promoted to the number one general of the army, and was responsible for commanding the remaining 2,500 standing troops. Frundsberg, who was originally as famous as Schwartz, was arranged by Marin to join the Blackwater Company as the head of the Blackwater Company and manage the 7,500 people. At the same time, Frundsberg's title and fief in East Frisia will not be affected in any way.
After finishing everything, Marin officially announced that 7,500 troops will be disarmed, and only 2,500 regular troops will be kept, that is, two phalanxes...
But the neighboring countries were not over yet. Three days later, Marin announced the establishment of the "Blackwater" mercenary company and took over the abolished 7,500 East Frisian troops. And the largest shareholder of Blackwater Company is Marin, Earl of East Frisia...
This time, everyone can see that Marin did not abolish the army at all. It's just that, in order to deal with the censure of the Imperial Council on the surface, the command of the army was transferred from the left hand to the right.
But there's nothing wrong with this move, at least on the surface. Because, Marin did accept the opinion of the Imperial Parliament on the surface. Those 7,500 people are indeed not regular troops. It's just that they still secretly accept Marin's command...
So, even though it is very hot. The bigwigs of the Imperial Parliament couldn't find any reason for Marin on the surface. You know, on the bright side, Marin only holds 40% of Blackwater's shares, and does not have an absolute controlling stake of 51%. Therefore, on the surface, it can also be said that Marin lost absolute control over the 7,500 soldiers.
Moreover, pure medieval Europeans did not know that the other four major shareholders were actually puppets found by Marin. They naively thought that there were really four rich men from the Counties of East Frisia who had invested in the company...
After the establishment of the Blackwater Company, as the company's general, Frundsberg took over the company's first business - assisting the regular army of the East Frisian County and defending the border...
Yes, it is clear that it will continue to play the role of the East Frisian Army. His salary is also the same as before. It's just that, on the surface, these mercenaries are not the regular army of East Frisia...
Several surrounding countries that are hostile to the Counties of East Frisia, such as Saxony and Oldenburg, almost got their noses crooked. Their spies, across the border, saw most of the East Frisian barracks that originally hung three golden eagle flags (Bloch family flags) with three cross hats inserted, but replaced the flags with black bears Banner of the Blackwater Company. But in fact, their army did not move at all, they just changed the military flag.