Bringing the Railway to Daming

The seat of the Western Sea Commandery was Western Sea City.

Inside the Prince of Dai's residence, Zhu Gui held the telegram he had just received, his face beaming with joy and excitement.

"Great! Father and elder brother have granted our request. We can finally lead our troops into France!" Overwhelmed with excitement, Zhu Gui habitually used his old form of address.

The advisors and generals under Zhu Gui in the hall were also pleased to hear this – the sooner Zhu Gui established his fiefdom, the sooner they could make achievements, and their wives and children could be granted titles and privileges!

Although the court only permitted Zhu Gui to lead troops into France and seize the opportunity to turn the tables, a formal vassal state could only be established after he had actually conquered a territory.

However, given the opportunity, the court believed that with the strength of Zhu Gui's army, conquering a territory would not be a problem.

Besides, based on their understanding of France, although the country can be considered a powerful nation in Europe, its actual strength is only so-so.

"Counselor Zou, have people make preparations. We need to set off for France as soon as possible!" After calming his excitement slightly, Zhu Gui gave the order.

At this moment, Xiang Yin, the strategist recruited by Zhu Gui, said: "Your Majesty, do not be hasty. If you want to lead a large army to France, I am afraid you will need to find a pretext to cover it up. Otherwise, once you enter French territory, you may be regarded as a great enemy by Philip II, or even arouse the hostility of Louis II."

Zhu Gui frowned and asked, "Mr. Xiang, do you have any ideas?"

Xiang Yin said, "Your Majesty can lead the remaining guards and the escorts recruited from the Western Sea in batches to pretend to be porters escorting supplies into France. Although this will be slower, it will conceal our strength."

Zhu Gui was a little unhappy.

However, he was only a bit cruel and reckless, not stupid. He knew that it would be best to go to France according to Xiang Yin's idea, so he said, "Then we should go there first - from last year to this year, we have only recruited more than 8,000 French escorts, which is still too few."

"Let's go there first and see if we can recruit and train the French escort army more quickly."

Xiang Yin understood Zhu Gui's temperament and did not raise any further objections. He simply said, "Your Majesty should not easily reveal your identity when you arrive in France, otherwise it may arouse the vigilance of Philip II and others."

"We understand."

Just as Zhu Gui was about to adjourn the meeting and get back to business, he heard Xiang Yin ask again, "Your Majesty, I wonder what instructions the court has given to His Highnesses Su, Liao, and Ning this time?"

Zhu Gui said, "It seems that no instructions were given."

Xiang Yin smiled and said, "Then let Your Majesty and the other three princes decide for themselves—since Your Majesty has already obtained permission to establish a vassal state in France, you can borrow troops from the other three princes or ask them for help."

"As long as His Majesty promises that when they establish vassal states in Europe in the future, our vassal association will send troops to assist them, these three princes will surely agree."

Zhu Gui's eyes lit up when he heard this.

Although he had a slight disagreement with his three younger brothers over the issue of command of the Four Kings mercenary army, they did not become enemies.

Moreover, both he and Zhu Yan and others knew that Europe was now white territory, and they needed mutual support to make a breakthrough there.

He then said, “Counselor Zou, write the invitations immediately. We want to host a banquet for Prince Su, Prince Liao, and Prince Ning!”

"Yes, Your Majesty."

···
···
More than a month later.

In an "abandoned" castle in the southwest of the Kingdom of France, Prince Zhu Gui of Dai wore a fine cloth armor and looked no different from the other high-ranking generals in the guard.

However, at this moment he sat imposingly in the seat of the former owner of this castle, a baron, listening to reports from several advisors and generals below.

He was referring to the number of troops he could currently mobilize in France.

"Currently, in France, besides His Majesty's three thousand guards, there are one thousand Western Sea retainers and more than eight thousand six hundred French retainers, totaling more than twelve thousand soldiers."

"If the remaining four thousand escorts from the West Sea come over in the future, there will be more than sixteen thousand soldiers."

Zhu Gui frowned and said, "We don't even have 20,000 men. If we want to establish a fiefdom, how can that be enough?"

According to Zhu Gui, the Kingdom of France, as a major European power, should have one to two hundred thousand "regular troops"—the exact number is probably unknown not only to the Bright Guard, but even to the regent Philip II.

After all, the so-called "regular army" here actually refers to the full-time soldiers raised by the various lords.

If we include the militia that lords can temporarily conscript, the number of troops would probably be over a million!

Although the French militia were no match for him, and he might not have ordered all the French lords to attack him when he established his fiefdom, the more troops the better.

Thinking of this, Zhu Gui said, "We've seen those French escort troops, and they're quite capable. Therefore, we must expand the French escort troops as soon as possible—to at least 30,000 within six months!"

How could the French garrison be expanded to 30,000 in just six months?

Upon hearing Zhu Gui's words, several strategists and military officers in the hall showed signs of difficulty.

Xiong Tingrui, one of the two commanders of the French escort army, said, "Your Majesty, I'm afraid this is difficult to accomplish—our French escort army is basically recruited from among the peasants, and the vast majority of French peasants are tenants of local lords, essentially half-serfs." "As long as these lords are around, the peasants will all obey their lords, and it's unlikely they will join our escort army—even if they wanted to, I'm afraid the lords wouldn't allow it."

Zhu Gui asked, "Then how were our previous French escorts recruited?"

Xiong Tingrui said, "It was only after we, as mercenaries, dealt with the bandits for Earl Navel, avenged his enemies, breached the castle, and killed the lord that the farmers of that territory were released from the lord's control and joined the retinue army."

“But since this spring, the surrounding lords have stopped clashing with Earl Navel, so we have no chance to breach other lords’ castles, nor have we had the chance to recruit squires.”

After listening, Zhu Gui slammed his hand on the table and exclaimed, "If there's no opportunity, why not create one?!"

Create opportunities?
Upon hearing Zhu Gui's words, the advisors immediately began to devise a plan.

Because the strategist Xiang Yin was still in charge of logistics at the Xihai Commandery and the subsequent transportation of the Xihai escort troops, he was not here.

Therefore, the chief strategist here was Zou Wuji.

At this moment, Zou Wuji said, "Does Your Majesty mean that we should send spies to deliberately create conflict between Earl Navel and other nobles, so that they will fight each other?"

"Too slow!" Zhu Gui said with a face full of dissatisfaction. "Since we have more than 8,000 French entourage under our command, let them disguise themselves as a noble private army pretending to be a bandit, and let them directly attack the castles of certain nobles and kill the lords."

"Then we can send people to drive away the 'bandits,' and then we can recruit local farmers to join the escort army, right? Such a simple method, how could you not think of it?"

Upon hearing this, Zou Wuji and the other strategists smiled wryly, thinking to themselves: Is this something we want or don't want? We didn't know you had such low standards, okay?
Then, another counselor, Song Hui, said, "Your Majesty, such actions are too risky. If it is discovered and the whole of France is informed, I'm afraid Your Majesty will become an enemy of France."

Zhu Gui smiled.

"We are going to destroy France and establish our own vassal state in the future. At that time, how many of those former French lords and nobles will not be hostile to us? Why should we be afraid of becoming the enemy of France?"

Song Hui said, "Your Majesty, I am afraid that things have happened too early. It is neither the right time to destroy France nor is it the right time for us to establish a vassal state."

Zhu Gui frowned. "Counselor Song, you won't achieve anything great if you keep looking back and forth like this—my mind is made up, it's settled then."

“Gordon, you will lead the Second Guard of the French Escort Army to pose as bandits. Next, we will discuss which lords to target.”

"Your subordinate obeys!" Gao Deng replied excitedly.

Not only does Gao Deng's name resemble that of a Westerner, but his appearance is also similar—he is of mixed race, being a Semu person and a Han Chinese.

Unlike strategists like Song Hui, military generals like Gao Deng and Xiong Tingrui were excited when they heard Zhu Gui's plan—they were worried about not having any battles to fight or any military achievements to gain, but they didn't expect that Zhu Gui would come up with a method to artificially "create" war as soon as he arrived.

Seeing that Zhu Gui had made up his mind, Zou Wuji and other advisors stopped trying to persuade him and instead did their best to help him refine his plan, hoping to delay the time when the truth of the matter would be known to the French nobles.

Of course, it would be even better if it could be kept secret forever.

Zou Wuji said, "Your Majesty, I think we can perhaps take a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, use spies to sow discord between the two lords, and on the other hand, carry out attacks under the guise of bandits."

Seeing that Zou Wuji and his advisors had finally gotten to the point, Zhu Gui laughed loudly: "Haha, brilliant! Let's do it this way!"

···
In the blink of an eye, more than a month has passed, and winter has arrived, with the weather in France noticeably getting colder.

However, a fierce battle is currently taking place in southwestern France.

In fact, since last year, the pro-war Grand Duke of Bourbon and Count of Naville have hired a powerful mercenary army from the Ming Dynasty. Under the grievances of many vassal lords, Philip II was forced to hold a secret meeting with Louis II of Bourbon. Since then, the disputes between the various lords of France have decreased.

Since the beginning of summer this year, France has enjoyed a long-awaited period of peace, with little fighting.

Unexpectedly, starting more than a month ago, several powerful bandit groups appeared in southwestern France, not only plundering manors and towns, but also breaching the castles of some lords and executing them!

Some of the lord's relatives and servants who managed to escape with their lives said that these bandits were not real bandits, but rather private armies of other nobles in disguise—because bandits could not possibly have such fine armor and weapons, nor could they possibly have such strong fighting capabilities.

In addition, some old conflicts between lords were inexplicably ignited, so the minor lords in the southwest began to accuse each other of being bandits in disguise.

For a time, the southwestern part of the Kingdom of France was thrown into complete chaos.

Paris.

Inside the palace, Philip II, in his private office, looked at the news of the conflict between the southwestern lords that had arrived that day, his gray eyebrows furrowed in worry.

After putting down the letters in his hand, he asked the young man opposite him, "John, what do you think about this matter?"

The young man appeared to be around thirty years old and was dressed in a French nobleman's military uniform. He was Philip II's son, known as "John the Fearless".

John, sporting a small mustache and a cynical smile, said, "Father, in my opinion, none of these minor lords of the Southwest are any good—most of them have sent men disguised as bandits to plunder other people's territories." (End of Chapter)