Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 467: Excessive Conscription
The Northern Army that accompanied Harvey on the expedition to the royal capital soon began to rotate garrisons after completely taking control of Jinhui City.

A brand new battalion, composed of a mix of new and old soldiers, will take over and complete the garrison mission in the royal capital for the next full year. This battalion of a thousand men has a very mixed composition of soldiers, coming from the Wasteland, Grizzly Territory, Fengyuan City... and even naturalized refugees from the southern part of the Principality. It can be said to be a truly integrated defense force.

The replaced Northern Army will not return to Spark City immediately - in the southern battle plan formulated by Harvey, Black Mountain Port south of Sancha Town and Silverpine City, which was ravaged by some lords of the neighboring Principality of Barclay, are both important targets that need to be captured next.

Porto Montenegro is the last important large port on the Ralph River south of the Principality of Saint Valen. Taking it is equivalent to directly opening up a convenient passage to the "Country of a Thousand Sails" Pharos, and will also provide Harvey with the only valuable sea outlet in the entire territory.

Silverpine City is close to the Duchy of Barclay and the wizard kingdom of Daes. After the conflict between the two countries broke out, it was swept by several groups of nobles from neighboring countries who intended to take advantage of the chaos to plunder. A large number of refugees and serfs flocked to Black Mountain Port and the royal capital, and many of them were received by Harvey's people and sent to the north.

Both cities were famous for their open trade and had no fortified walls for defense, making them not easy targets to defend. Harvey ordered Pierce to take charge of Golden City and handed over the command to him. His three battalions were assigned different combat missions. The third battalion commanded by Wayne was responsible for cooperating with the former chief knight Dickinson to rush to the border to persuade the princes to surrender. The first battalion led by Vaughn went downstream to Black Mountain Port, and Duff commanded the second battalion of infantry and light cavalry to attack Silver Pine City, directly sweeping away the neighboring nobles who were still lingering near the town and looting.

Having just captured the royal capital, Jinhui City, the morale of the entire expeditionary army was extremely high. This civilian army, built according to the template of a modern army, had professional soldiers with no worries at all. After all, ordinary feudal nobles and knight landlords would never abandon their fields during the spring plowing and autumn harvest and easily provoke a war... For any aristocratic army in the southern border countries to engage in long-distance overseas combat all year round like the Northern Border Army, it would be unimaginable.

The General Staff Headquarters, which already has a prototype and is able to operate initially, cooperates with the political guidance that goes deep into the grassroots of the army. In actual combat, this army no longer needs the lord to lead the team personally, and can faithfully and quickly carry out combat missions. Coupled with the powerful firepower that can be said to be crushing, Harvey has almost no worries about the outcome of the battle.

Compared to the battle which had almost no suspense... what Harvey was more worried and concerned about was actually how to completely overthrow the old aristocracy and rebuild a new order in the north after completely controlling the entire Duchy of Saint Valen.

The Principality of Saint Valen, located in the north-central part of the Southern Continent, has only three cities with a population of over 10,000 people in the entire country - the first of which is naturally the royal capital Jinhui City with a population of nearly 30,000 people, followed by Fengyuan City located in the fertile plains with a population of over 10,000, and finally Grizzly Castle located in the northern border area near the Divine Ridge Mountains, with a population of barely 10,000.

These three cities are now under Harvey's actual control, and it is necessary to set up fully functional municipal institutions in the city. The Municipal Government of Spark City has been continuously recruiting and training grassroots management talents, and then selecting some local small nobles who have been engaged in municipal management in the past from various cities. It will soon be able to get on the right track and incorporate the city into the new system of the North.

However, these cities are also where the old nobles have the most presence, so garrisons must be retained. On the one hand, this is to resist the resurgence of church forces from outside, and on the other hand, it is necessary to secretly guard against the resurgence of certain aristocratic groups within.

"Just garrisoning three major cities is already straining our forces." Pierce had been expressing his anxiety about this, repeatedly approaching Harvey with suggestions. "Golden Glory City has a garrison of 1,000 troops, Fengyuan City needs nearly 1,000 as well. Strategically located locations like Sancha Town, Black Mountain Port, and Silver Pine City require a garrison of at least a 500-man battalion. Grizzly Territory, while closest to Spark City, still requires a garrison of 1,000 men. Add to that the 500-man garrison at the Ice Sea Exploration Base..." Pierce, who was never one to haggle, counted on his fingers as Harvey settled the score. "My lord! The garrisons alone account for nearly half of our total strength! Spark City cannot relax its defenses; the 3,000 defenders cannot be moved, no matter what! As a result... the troops we can still freely mobilize are less than 2,000, and that's even including the two less mobile 100-man artillery battalions."

Harvey actually figured this out earlier than Pierce did. He couldn't help but sigh, "After two rounds of military expansion at the end of last winter and the beginning of this year, we've barely managed to increase our troop strength to nearly 10,000. At least 40% of these soldiers are new recruits who have been in the army for less than six months. It's a bit of a rush."

“How effective is the third round of conscription, which was just announced last month?”

"We already went through two rounds of conscription at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, so the third round wasn't very effective. We only recruited less than two thousand reserve troops..." Pierce answered honestly. "Because the expansion somewhat lowered the recruitment standards, this batch of recruits is far from our regular troops... Even if they train for another two or three months, they'll just barely meet the quality standards of the Defense Force."

The meaning is very clear. The quality of this last round of recruits is worrying. Even if they are regularized, they can only be assigned to the defense force system and cannot be used as combat troops that can take the initiative to attack.

Harvey covered his face with his hands in some helplessness, thinking back to when the pioneers formed the first militia to resist the invasion of the evil orcs. Under his own instructions, Pierce selected the refugees from the wasteland with the same criteria as selecting livestock - as long as they had healthy limbs, good teeth, sharp ears and eyes, they would be qualified. After just over a month of training, they were forced to carry weapons and fight the evil orcs.

Now, as his power grows faster and faster, the size of the army is also expanding rapidly, and the various standards for recruiting soldiers are naturally raised accordingly. In fact, in Harvey's cognition, as long as the civilians of this era have received basic literacy education, can distinguish between east and west, understand combat orders, and will not flee in fear in the face of battle, they are already qualified soldiers. As for combat skills... simple things like aiming at the enemy and pulling the trigger, as long as the number of bullets consumed in live-fire shooting training accumulates to a certain level, almost everyone can be trained to become a sharpshooter who never misses a shot. It is just a matter of time.

"Too frequent recruitment will squeeze the labor force in other production sectors. Let's have the military recruitment office suspend recruitment..." Harvey patted Pierce on the shoulder and said soothingly, "Don't worry too much. Once we completely control the entire Principality of Saint Valen, refugee recruitment will reach a new peak. By then, Spark City will have a large population to expand our army."

If all goes well, Harvey hopes to completely end the war and unrest throughout the principality before the arrival of this winter.

(End of this chapter)