Chapter 318： Blackwater mercenaries

Solved some reforms of the official institutions, Marin set his sights on the army and decided to reform the army ...

Frankly speaking, the size of the 10,000 regular standing army currently retained by Marin is arrogant among the European nations. Even most Principalities do not have such a scale. Even some kingdoms do not have the size of a 10,000 standing army. For example, the Kingdom of Portugal has only five to six thousand standing army troops. Only in wartime will temporary expansion.

Not only that, in addition to the 10,000 regular standing army, East Friesland currently retains 7,000 reserve forces. In the peasant leisure season, these 7,000 reserve troops often gather for training, and they do not relax for a moment.

The combined size of the 17,000 troops and the defeat of more than 20,000 troops in Saxony made the neighbors of the East Frisian Land very frightened.

As a result, many vassal states close to East Frisian have submitted opinions to the Imperial Parliament, asking Marin to dissolve the large standing army, so that the neighbors can "relax". After all, a small country of 3,000 to hundreds of square kilometers, maintaining a 10,000 standing army and 7,200 frontline troops, is really scary.

As it happens, during the reform of Marin, the Worms Empire Parliament sent a letter asking Marin not to keep so many standing troops in peacetime to avoid misunderstanding.

Although Marin was not afraid of the Imperial Parliament, after thinking about it again and again, she did not want to offend the Imperial Parliament. You know, the Imperial Parliament is the collective will of the vassals of Germany. Although the emperor had his own mouthpiece in it, it did not prevail.

Most importantly, even if Maximilian I wanted to make a voice in the Imperial Parliament, he needed to unite the many nobles of the Saxony and Swabian families to achieve his purpose.

如今 But now, Saxony and Marin have long been enemies. Even if the emperor wanted to support Marin in the Imperial Parliament, he could not get the support of the Saxon nobility. Moreover, in order to appease the Saxon aristocracy and win their support, the emperor's forces mostly abstained from this resolution to show their neutral position between the Saxon aristocracy and Marin.

The emperor has abstained, and most of the princes are the emperor's opposition. The resolution naturally passed easily ...

Although Ma Lin has obtained the legal status of the 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 do not agree.

The princes knew deeply that Marin was an emperor. If it is absorbed into the Imperial Parliament, it is tantamount to an additional vote for the emperor. Thus, although the Imperial Parliament did not veto Marin's intention to become the Earl of the Empire, it refused to make East Frisian Land a full member of the Imperial Parliament. Therefore, Marin also passively accepted this resolution without any prior knowledge. Even if the emperor sent someone to tell him the news in advance, it would not help. Because he didn't know about it when the Imperial Assembly quarreled ...

Umarin could rudely reject the decision of the Imperial Parliament, but that would come at a price. Although the members of the Imperial Parliament are unlikely to join forces to attack Marin, Marin is still reluctant to see this happen. Moreover, even if not beaten, Marin is worried about economic sanctions. So Marin had to make a compromise.

However, Marin was unwilling to dissolve the 10,000 regular army that he had just trained. After all, it is easy to dissolve the army and reconvene the elite soldiers, but it is difficult.

After all, as a veteran with great battle experience, in this age of endless warfare, it is very popular. Forefoot Marin disbands the veterans, and there may be other forces on the back feet to draw them down ...

Moreover, these veterans have received modern military training from Marin. Once they leave and are hired, Marin's training methods will spread on a large scale. By that time, everyone is modern. How can Marin maintain a military advantage? Even though the Spaniards and Teutonics came to study the "Marin Square", Marin only explained to them in detail the problem of the Square Matrix, and did not emphasize to them the importance of modern military training. Therefore, what they learned was mainly the use of the Spanish large square, not the full set.

Therefore, in any case, Marin was unwilling to dissolve most of the soldiers. Especially those wise officers, Marin was unwilling to lose.

Those veterans are drawn to them, they may not understand the importance of modern military discipline. But those officers who were taken away, even if they didn't understand the truth, they could perfectly replicate modern military training.

The problem is that Marin now has to keep all his men on the one hand, and on the other hand, he has to explain to the Imperial Parliament on the surface ...

Then, after much meditation, Marin finally came up with a way to fool the Empire Council ...

That is, set up a company and digest most of the soldiers. Change their status from regular soldiers on the bright side to mercenaries under the company ...

This trick is naturally learned from the East India companies of later England and the Netherlands. These two East India companies are both pioneers of colonizing the East in two countries. Nor are they nominally part of the official institutions of the two countries, but private institutions.

However, the East Indian companies in these two countries have huge numbers of troops. The number of mercenaries who ruled India in the later period of the British East India Company reached a staggering 200,000 to 300,000. The number of mercenaries in the Dutch East India Company is also over 10,000.

Therefore, Marin's plan was to transfer most of the "organizational relations" of the soldiers to this company, so that the number of East Frisian Land Reserves would fall to two squares with a total of 2,500 people. . The other 7,500 people, on the surface, became armed with private companies ...

The company's name Marin had been plagiarized long ago-Blackwater. Its logo also follows the black bear paw of the early Blackwater company ...

After doing everything well, Marin signed an order to set up a private armed contracting company, Heishui Company, and transfer the relationship of 7500 soldiers to the company. Of course, all their titles and fiefdoms in East Frisian Land were reserved. However, when they went abroad, they declared themselves employees of Blackwater. Internally, nothing actually changed.

As for the company's shareholders, Marin casually fabricated several names and registered them. But in essence, several major shareholders are their own pseudonyms. In addition, several senior generals such as Schwartz and Flenzberger also accounted for 1% of the company's dry shares. They only have the right to dividends, cannot cash out, and have no say.

As for the 5 major shareholders, in addition to Marin's public name, the other 4 "trumpet", Marin selected 4 傀儡, as representatives, fakely participated in the meeting, posing as shareholders. But in essence, when the four so-called "shareholders" participate in the shareholders' meeting, the only job 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 remained the senior general of the East Frisian Army, promoted to the army's number one general, and was responsible for commanding the reserved 2,500 standing army. Originally the same name as Schwartz, Franz Berger was arranged by Marin into the Blackwater Company, and he served as the head of the Blackwater Company, managing the 7,500 people. At the same time, Franzberg's title and fiefdom in East Friesland were unaffected.

After doing everything well, Marin officially announced-disarming 7,500 people and retaining only 2,500 regular troops, that is, two square arrays ...

邻 But the neighbors are not happy yet. Three days later, Marin announced the establishment of the "Blackwater" mercenary company and took over the 7500 East Frisian Land Army that was abolished. The largest shareholder of Blackwater is Marin, Earl of Friesland ...

At this moment, everyone can see that Marin has not withdrawn the army at all. However, in order to cope with the blame of the Imperial Parliament ~ www.novelhall.com ~, passing the command of the army from the left hand to the right hand is simply a matter of changing the soup and not the medicine.

However, this hand is at least superficial on the surface. Because Marin did accept the views of the Imperial Parliament on the surface. Those 7,500 people are indeed not regular troops. However, they still secretly accepted Marin's command ...

So, despite the fire. The big brothers of the Imperial Parliament, however, can't pick out Marin from the bright side. You know, on the bright side, Marin only has a 40% stake in Heishui, and neither has an absolute controlling stake of 51%. Therefore, on the surface, it can be said that Marin lost absolute control over the 7,500 soldiers.

Moreover, the simple medieval Europeans did not know that the other four major shareholders were actually the ones that Marin had found out. They naively thought that there were really four rich people in East Frisian Land joining the company ...

After the establishment of the Blackwater Company, as the company's general leader, Flenzberger took over the company's first business-assisting the East Frisian State Army, defending the border ...

It was clear that he still continued to play the role of the East Frisian Army. His salary is no different from the original. However, on the surface, these mercenaries are not the regular forces of East Frisian ...

几个 Several countries around the hostile East Frisian countries, such as Saxony and Oldenburg, have almost crooked noses. Their agents, across the border, saw most of the East Frisian barracks where three golden eagle flags (Brock family flags) were hung with three cross hats each, but they replaced the flags with black bears. Palm of Blackwater company banner. But in fact, their troops did not move at all, they just changed their flags.