When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 1072 Jeanne's Letter
"Is it a letter from Jeanne?"

Seeing Edwin enter holding a letter with a red wax seal, Horn put down his pen and asked.

“Yes, that’s right.” Edwin placed the letter on Horn’s desk.

Horn did not open the package immediately, but instead looked up at Edwin.

She was wearing a gray woolen suit today, her short hair was pinned back with a hair clip, and she had a bright smile on her face.

Those iron hairpins were made from scraps from the Lightning Forge, and they've been selling very well at the Holy Relic Court lately.

Horn glanced nostalgically at the hair clip, which resembled one from his past life, before unfolding the letter and beginning to read.

During this period, Jeanne sent a letter almost every week, recounting her experiences on Dawn Island.

Horn set Jeanne's letter to an extremely high priority; it would almost immediately reach Horn as soon as it was sent to the Holy See.

She did not disappoint Horn's trust. After annihilating Guen in Doubi Village, Jeanne is now attacking Shuiya Port.

By capturing Duck Harbor and then blocking the river with iron chains, they essentially cut off the kingdom's vital artery for supporting the area surrounding Longbow Fortress.

It would be impossible for Count Ruka or Regent Omes of Dawn Island to quickly deploy troops and supplies to the vicinity of Longbow Keep as they had done before.

As for Sochette and the others who remained at Longbow Fortress, they sent letters to the churches and monasteries in the surrounding area, inviting them to a meeting at the camp outside the city.

If you come to the meeting, there's still a possibility of discussion.

If you don't come to the meeting, then you can expect to be taken over by those who do come.

Unless you have the ability to overpower the person leading the meeting, then you can choose whether or not to come.

Just as Horn and his advisors had predicted, these churches and monasteries had long lost their former arrogance.

After King Gigi fell and the Holy Throne City was occupied by the armies of the three kingdoms, their military strength was entirely supported by the armed monks.

With the collapse of the royal order, the previously stable aristocratic system underwent a reshuffle.

The church, which the royal family used to check and balance the great lords, as well as the minor lords and knights, were all swallowed up by the local nobles.

The war of lords, which had once disappeared, has once again broken out in the Kingdom of Leia.

Especially in the Dawn Island and Fairy Stone Valley regions, and even on River Island, a series of lord disputes broke out.

The armies of vagrants in various places often numbered in the tens of thousands, including a large number of retired royal soldiers and bandit knights.

Jeanne described this vibrant scene of life and flourishing creatures in her letter as "the most beautiful landscape."

Whether you win them over or defeat and then incorporate them into your own forces, you can quickly assemble a resistance army.

There was one thing that both Horn and Jeanne were dissatisfied with—the number of peasant uprisings was still very small.

After all, Dawn Island is not like Thousand River Valley. It is already quite wealthy, and with the entanglement of various forces, no one can go too far.

The farmers here live a standard of living that is neither good nor bad.

Therefore, Jeanne's recruitment work often only allowed her to select relatively honest and upright vagrants to form the Longbow Fortress Guards.

The first batch of the Christian Guard has now reached 900 men, organized into nine hundred-man squads, totaling six musketeer squads and three pike squads.

However, Jeanne also requested in her letter that more officers and veterans be sent, even warrant officers who had just graduated from military academy.

Now Jeanne has eighteen infantry officers, nine cavalry officers, and a dozen or so veteran sergeants under her command, which can at most form a force of two thousand men.

This quantity is certainly sufficient for Longbow Fortress at this stage.

If all goes well, by the end of the month, Horn will be able to see Longbow Keep's merchant ships arrive in Charlottetown.

However, considering the enemies we face in the long run, a force of eight thousand is barely enough.

Seeing this, Horn couldn't help but rub his temples. There was no shortage of officers, but very few were willing to go to Longbow Keep.

Officers graduating from military academies are typically awarded the rank of warrant officer and serve as adjutants to centurions.

Then he was promoted to second lieutenant and became a centurion.

Next came the lieutenant colonel, who served as the adjutant to the corps commander; then the junior officer served as the corps commander; and finally, the general served as the battle group commander.

This is a complete promotion path.

A business trip to Changgongbao, however, adds a blank or stain to one's resume.

What if we're fighting low-level battles from ten years ago and can't keep up with the trend of breech-loading spring-loaded guns?
After the advent of the breech-loading spring-loaded gun, the Holy Alliance army immediately began to adapt and reform.

Going to Longbow Fortress at this time would be penny-wise and pound-foolish, wouldn't it?

Horn could use force to command, but that wouldn't motivate him much. After thinking it over, Horn simply wrote a small note.

The general idea is that officers are allowed to be promoted one rank to lead troops at Longbow Fortress, and Jeanne can promote officers and advance their ranks at will.

After being promoted in rank, one can be demoted by half a rank and brought back to the Holy Alliance, or be appointed as a senior officer in the local area.

This should temporarily alleviate the manpower shortage problem at Longbow Fortress.

After putting Jeanne's letter away in the cabinet, Horn pulled out the "Dawn Island Aid Plan" from a stack of documents.

Having stabilized the city, the next step is to eliminate surrounding threats and export the revolution.

If nothing unexpected happens, the next step will be to spread the faith in the countryside, abolish privileges, provide military escorts, and then organize them into centurions.

However, the Hundred Household District of Dawn Island was destined to be neither as devout nor as centralized as Thousand River Valley.

This is determined by customs, economic conditions, and living standards.

But it doesn't matter, in the process, Jeanne's Holy Alliance army and monks will gradually change the local society.

Once the grassroots are under control, the focus will be on developing the military, and then using the military to overthrow the powerful nobles.

The wealth left behind by the nobility was used to complete the agricultural revolution and unleash consumer power.

At that time, Shenglian's upstream and downstream industries, including peat, textiles, agricultural tools and building materials, will usher in another wave of growth.

As for whether they have the spending power to afford the Shattered Stone Plains or Immortal Stone Fields, Horn isn't sure; he might even have to subsidize them and pay out of pocket.

But Dawn Island, the old aristocratic gathering place, has a well-deserved reputation.

Dawn Island is home to numerous noble families, many of which have existed for over a thousand years.

Their territories are spread throughout the empire, with enclaves and small, non-adjacent plots everywhere, and they do not rely entirely on the territory of Dawn Island for sustenance.

Thanks to this economic environment and political practices, territorial wars within Dawn Island are often limited to minor skirmishes, with peace being the priority.

Therefore, the intensity of local warfare was kept very low, and wealth accumulated over thousands of years.

Otherwise, why would King Gigi exploit Dawn Island so ruthlessly, instead of exploiting other places?

We'll have a meeting later, and then we can gradually expand the current production capacity.

With that in mind, Horn added a few more strokes to the note, strode to the door, opened the study door, and called out to the Privy Councillors' Chamber across the hall, "Petie."

Petit quickly approached, and Horn handed him a note: "Write it as a proposal and forward it to Madeleine, Catherine, and Hakuto for review."

Petit quickly glanced at the contents of the note: "Not to be nosy, Your Majesty, but isn't it a bit much to transfer so many officers to the field and give Jeanne the power of battlefield promotions...?"

“Don’t worry,” Horn patted him on the shoulder. “Let’s do it this way.”

These holy maidens are only superior in stature; there is no possibility that their merits surpass those of the master.

"Yes."

Petit left with the note, but Horn didn't go back to his chair. Instead, he went to the window and looked out at the rain-soaked woods and Central Park.

Recently, Horn has been working from home in his mountain villa.

He wasn't ignoring court like some Taoist priest; rather, the Holy See building was undergoing renovations.

New fluorite lamps need to be installed, and space needs to be made for the installation of water supply, fans, and heating systems.

After all, based on the current progress, the prototype of the Ethereum clock will be completed by the end of the year at the latest, and it will be tested in the clock tower.

In this way, the problems of short winding life, stiff winding, and difficulty in winding are all solved.

As long as you sit at home, the ether will come and wind up the previously slack spring, so you no longer need to change it more than ten times a day.

The only limitation on the ether clock and spring mechanism is currently the frequency at which ether is pumped.

According to Shilov and his team's calculations, it would take ten to twelve launches of the ether field per day to barely ensure the continuous operation of the clockwork mechanism.

Currently, the Holy Relic Court can only launch an ether field once a day, which is far from meeting the required standards.

However, once the energy problem is solved, many star-forged gear-driven machines can be replaced by clockwork magazines.

In this way, more star-cast gears are freed up to drive the spring magazine, allowing it to run almost around the clock.

With the help of dreamless divination, calculating more etheric weaknesses will not be difficult.

Looking at the streetlights that were being erected little by little along the roadside in the distance, Horn couldn't help but smile.

(End of this chapter)