Steel, gunpowder, and spellcasters

Chapter 559 Siege (XI)

  [early morning]

[On the walls of the Castle of Kings]

"A stone, if thrown with enough force, can knock down an enemy."

  Jason Cornelius stood on the top of the Castle of the Kings, bent down and picked up a stone that was stacked behind the breastwork to hit people, and said without turning his head:

"However, no matter how strong a person is, if he is asked to throw stones continuously, there will come a time when he can no longer lift his arms. Twenty stones, thirty stones, or even a hundred stones if he uses a sling. But no matter what, human strength is limited.

“Although he can be full of energy again if given some time to rest, in most cases the battle will be over within an hour or even a few minutes.

“You may have read about battles that lasted for days, but if you take out the time of actual fighting in the entire battle, you will find that even in battles that lasted for days, the actual fighting was still measured in minutes and hours.

"Because once the battle becomes intense, the winner will be decided immediately."

Cornelius turned to look at his entourage and said earnestly: "So when you find that the battle is becoming increasingly intense, all you have to do is to continue to persevere."

……

Around the Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Front, a small group of people followed closely.

The ages of this group of people are mixed, the oldest is at least 40 years old, and the youngest is in his early twenties at most.

If there was anything they had in common, it was that each of them wore a brand new officer uniform, yet their every move lacked the military bearing.

However, this cannot be entirely blamed on them, because strictly speaking, they are "new recruits".

  Some of them bought their way into the army after the Bloody Night at Kingsburg, some were temporarily recruited after the disastrous defeat at River Valley Village, and some were urgently enlisted after the Southern Front landed.

Some were originally sheriffs, some were originally potters, and some were originally students...

However, it is these "new recruit" officers who are charged with the important responsibility of commanding the local militia forces of the Kings' Castles.

Because apart from "not receiving formal military training and education", they have one thing in common - they all have a close relationship with Grover Magnus.

In other words, these commissioned officers are the most reliable people that the honorable Grand Speaker can find.

In the current situation, nothing is more important for the Grand Speaker than reliability.

……

Hearing the commander's words, a timid voice floated out from the ranks of commissioned officers: "Excuse me, sir, when will the battle be considered fierce?"

A group of commissioned officers collectively cast their eyes on a young man at the back of the crowd, making the latter wish he could find a crack in the ground to crawl into the city wall.

Cornelius tapped the battlement with the stone in his hand, and the commissioned officers immediately turned their eyes back to the commander.

"When you try to run away," Cornelius said calmly, "that's when the battle heats up."

The commissioned officers accompanying him laughed dryly, but looking at the commander's expression, it seemed that he was not joking, so the laughter stopped abruptly.

"Your question is very good," Cornelius praised briefly, and then put the stone in his hand on the parapet wall, "Speaking of stones, the same stone, without throwing it hard, just throwing it from the wall, if you are lucky, can also knock down an enemy.

"And even women and children could throw stones from the walls for hours."

Cornelius nodded slightly. "Gentlemen, please imagine the actual situation on the battlefield: in the midst of smoke, roaring guns and cannons, it is extremely difficult to accurately throw a stone to kill the enemy. In comparison, throwing stones down from the city wall is so easy that it can't be any easier."

"It's the same stone, and both of them are used to kill the enemy by throwing it," Cornelius asked the commissioned officers, "what's the difference between the two methods? Why is one difficult and the other easy?"

The commissioned officers looked at each other in bewilderment, not because the question was difficult, but because it was too simple.

"One is to throw it from a flat surface?" As if encouraged by the previous voice, the timid voice answered bravely, "The other is to throw it from a high place?"

Hearing this nonsense answer, the commissioned officers were speechless.

Unexpectedly, the commander asked seriously, "Why can stones be thrown down from a high place?"

"Because..." The owner of the timid voice suddenly became the focus of everyone's attention. He was sweating profusely and answered with a stiff face, "Because someone moved the stone to a higher place."

Some of the commissioned officers laughed out loud.

However, Cornelius looked at the young man for a moment, and suddenly clapped his hands, "Gentlemen, this young gentleman has just pointed out the core principle of all fortress defense tactics - moving the stones to a high place in advance. Please applaud him."

The commissioned officers applauded without understanding why.

"What's your name?" Cornelius asked.

"Misha," the young man answered quietly, "Groni Misha."

"Mr. Groni," Cornelius nodded, "I remember your name."

The commissioned officers applauded again. No one was jealous of Xiao Misha. After all, having his name remembered by the commander at this time was not necessarily a good thing.

"'Move the stones to a higher place in advance', please remember, gentlemen, this is the key to defending a city," Cornelius explained as simply as possible, "It is easy to throw stones down from the city wall because you have already suffered in advance when you moved the stones to the top of the city wall.

“In fact, it takes no less effort to lift a stone from the ground to the wall than to throw a stone to kill the enemy.

“But throwing stones to kill an enemy uses the strength within you, and your strength is limited.

“Moving stones to the wall is like storing power in the stones in advance.

"The more stones you carry to the wall, the more power you have in reserve, and the more power you can unleash in battle."

"This is the core of defensive warfare, gentlemen. Move the stones to a higher place in advance, which is -" Cornelius paused, "build up momentum."

The commissioned officers were confused by what they heard, but many of them understood only one word, "stone".

"Stone is just a metaphor, gentlemen," Cornelius patted the battlements beside him. "Preparing stones is building up momentum, collecting gunpowder is building up momentum, storing food is building up momentum, building fortresses and digging trenches are also building up momentum."

He said in a voice like a bell:

“It takes years of training before a soldier can throw a stone accurately on the battlefield.

“Standing on the wall, even a stone thrown by a child could be fatal.

"On the uncovered plains, only the bravest spearmen could face the charge of the cavalry.

“Standing in the bastion, even a new soldier going into battle for the first time can easily kill a veteran who has experienced many battles.

"New soldiers and children can kill the enemy not because they are stronger than the enemy, but because they have already 'carried stones up the wall' long before the battle.

“That’s why we in the Piedmont always say, ‘One more shovel of dirt before the war means one less drop of blood shed during the war.’”

"Gentlemen, now you understand why we have to rush to build these fortifications, right?" Cornelius pointed to the trenches, fortresses and another trench under the city. "These are the 'stones moved to the city wall in advance'. They are the potential energy we have accumulated in advance, just waiting to be released. "If the rebels want to attack the new city, they will have to step into the battlefield we set up. For every shovel of earth we dig, they will fill it with a pool of blood.

"As long as we can make every grain of gunpowder, every bullet, every trench, and every fortress play its due role, the rebels will bleed dry at the foot of Kingsburg, and victory will surely belong to us."

The commissioned officers applauded again enthusiastically.

“Digging trenches and carrying stones are neither dignified nor glorious, but it is these neglected hard work that enables the weak to defeat the strong, the new soldiers to defeat the old soldiers, and the oppressed civilians to defeat the arrogant emperors.

"Gentlemen, this is 'accumulating strength'," Jason Cornelius said with a friendly smile, "Gentlemen, I have taught you the highest secrets of the military doctrine of the Federation Army."

The commander's smile was infectious, and the commissioned officers began to laugh along with him.

However, it was that timid voice again that broke the harmonious atmosphere.

"Sir," Misha asked again from the back of the crowd. He pointed to the enemy fortifications outside the city and mustered up his courage. "Excuse me, are the rebels... also 'gathering strength'?"

The smiles on the commissioned officers' faces froze in an instant.

……

After Jason Cornelius received the report of the appearance of the Winged Lion flag, the "rebels" built a lot of buildings under the Castle of Kings for three consecutive days.

In just one day, the rebels built a series of small fortresses around the new city, surrounding the city walls without any gaps.

The defenders on the city wall did not know the official name given to these equidistant and continuous earthen walls by the "rebels". But when a newly-shifted local militiaman exclaimed the next morning, "When did these old fence posts appear outside?", the extremely vivid nickname "fence posts" quickly eliminated other names and became the only name used by the defenders to refer to the works of the "rebels".

  And everyone who hears this nickname will quickly appreciate the true subtlety of this nickname, because it not only describes the current situation, but also contains predictions for the future:

The stakes have been driven in, so how far can the fence be?

As expected, the "rebels'" enthusiasm for carving the earth did not diminish with the completion of the fortress complex, but instead became even more intense.

At the same time as the "fence stakes" were taking shape, the "rebels" immediately began to dig communication trenches between the various fortresses.

According to the local militia, the enthusiasm of the weasel digging the base of the chicken coop wall after three days and three nights was not as strong as the "new land reclamation man" digging the soil outside the Zhuwang Castle.

Even more confused than the local militia were the provincial officers of the Southern Front.

Since its establishment, the Federal Army has been famous for its earthwork skills and has always been rolling in the mud, so it was ridiculed as "mud men".

Now, seeing the "rebels" digging trenches like crazy outside the city, the officers of the Southern Front Army were confused for a moment and couldn't figure out which side, inside or outside the city, were the real federal people.

Moreover, with "fence stakes" acting as support points on the front line, the "rebels" began to boldly employ non-military personnel in the works.

When the earthen wall was being built, only blue men could be seen on the "rebel" construction site.

When the communication trenches were being dug, a large number of gray figures suddenly appeared in the defenders' field of vision.

The Southern Front Army had already figured out that the "rebels" had also chosen blue as the main color of their uniforms.

Although the blue actually observed on the "rebel" soldiers can be described as a variety of colorful "blues", it is obvious that the "rebels" made an attempt to unify the uniforms.

And those gray figures dressed in undyed coarse cloth clothes - or even without shirts - from afar were obviously farmers recruited from nearby.

The people in the city still don't know how the "rebels" found those farmers who ran faster than rabbits and made them work for them.

All they knew was that with the help of the "little gray men", in less than two days, the "little blue men" had dug a trench parallel to the city wall, connecting various small fortresses and extending from the bank of the Jinliu River to the bank of the Shijian River.

They also used the soil dug out from the trench to build a steep earth wall behind the trench.

The "fence stake" prophecy came true.

From river bank to river bank, the "rebels" used an artificial geographical barrier to completely isolate the kings' castles from Xilin Province.

After realizing this, the morale of the defenders inevitably became depressed, and the atmosphere in the city became more depressing invisibly.

The more vigorously the rebels fought outside the city, the more nervous and uneasy the defenders inside the city became.

After all, being besieged and being literally "besieged" are two different things.

Old memories were awakened, and a new round of food buying frenzy broke out in the Castle of Kings almost immediately.

Now, no one knows when the siege will end. Even the citizens who were mentally prepared for the difficulty and length of the siege began to doubt whether their previous ideas were too optimistic.

The expectations of all the people in the Kings' Castle for the future are falling in the worst direction.

  It was only because of the flour brought in by the Southern Front that the price of food in the Kings' Castles did not rise to the sky;

It was also thanks to the soup kitchens set up by the Southern Front Army that no one starved to death in Zhuwang Fort.

But Jason Cornelius was no saint—and certainly never claimed to be one.

Therefore, taking advantage of the collective panic among the citizens of the Kings' Castle, Cornelius instructed the headquarters' gendarmerie to publicly raid all the major grain stores and grain merchants' homes in the city, and detained all the major grain merchants on the charge of "hoarding and driving up grain prices", and confiscated all the stocks in their warehouses.

Through this operation, Jason Cornelius eliminated the local grain merchants who were hypocritical and placed the flour supply of the Kings Castle completely under the management of the Southern Front Army. He also boosted the morale of the militia defending the city and won unanimous applause from the middle and lower class citizens of the Kings Castle.

After temporarily solving the food rationing problem, Jason Cornelius began to transfer part of the defense area to the local militia.

That was why he personally came to the new city for an "inspection" early in the morning with a group of commissioned officers.

……

Hearing Misha's question, the commissioned officers present all shrank their necks unconsciously.

Although Brigadier General Jason Cornelius was usually polite to the commissioned officers, many of them - especially the older ones - had already seen clearly from the former's drastic measures to wipe out the local grain merchants that the commander of the Southern Front was actually not easy to get along with.

The commissioned officers thought that the commander had been humiliated and would be furious, or at least walk away in anger.

Unexpectedly, when Jason Cornelius heard Xiaomisa's question, an unprecedented sincere smile appeared on his face. First it was a smile, then a grin, and finally a loud laugh.

"Yes, the rebels are also gathering momentum," said Cornelius, who had laughed enough, with a gratified look on his face, "So, they did learn some real skills in the Lu Academy, don't you think?"

However, what Cornelius and the commissioned officers present did not know was that at the same time, outside the city, right in front of them, something happened.

Richard Mason is also teaching students from the "Second School".

  [Thanks to the book friend [Cat Towel Washing Face and Going Out to Beg for Food], thank you very much]

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