Chapter 383： southern stalemate

With the arrival of the tenth month of the holy calendar in 1993, most of the Aldo Kingdom began to enter winter, including King Capital Jingyao.

"This rebellion must be put down this year!"

In the camp of the kingdom's army, Princess Catherine said so to her generals with a solemn expression.

The generals around her all nodded emphatically.

From the spring of 1990 to the present, the rebellion has lasted for nearly three years, and the kingdom really can't afford it.

The end of the year is not far away. After winter, the supply of food and grass will become more and more difficult, which also means that the decisive battle is just around the corner.

They had already agreed a date with their opponents, the Giles rebels.

The "covenant" was proposed by the rebels, and the kingdom agreed.

It's not that the two sides are so particular about chivalry. In the past year, the two sides have definitely played against each other a lot. Detours, sneak attacks, feints...all the methods that can be used in the war have been used.

The battle line went from south to north, and the two sides seemed to be in a tug of war. They tried their best to win the other side, but they always returned to the Fougeres area.

When both sides are exhausted, it is logical for each to bet on the last bit of strength to fight the final battle.

Regarding the final battle, many generals of the kingdom's army were a little apprehensive at first, because in early autumn, the Duke of Veblen—the largest lord in the east of the kingdom—finally made a move and formally sent troops to join Giles' rebel army.

This old fox, when Grand Duke Greedy Wolf launched a rebellion, did not stand up to support the royal family like other lords, but only sent envoys to ask for marriage with the royal family, but he regretted it first after the royal family agreed, and then issued a message "Jia His Majesty the King slapped his Majesty the slap in the face for remarks such as the fact that Erles occupies a certain degree of morality."

The problem is that after he expressed his support for Giles, he just stayed in his own territory and did not send a single soldier to support Giles. The Duke of Veblen was an unpredictable and capricious man, and people would not be surprised if he showed his loyalty to the royal family one day.

However, he does have capricious capital. The territory of the Veblen family is located in the Great Basin in the east of the Kingdom, surrounded by mountains and mountains, making it easy to defend but difficult to attack. Send troops to defend in dangerous places, and outsiders will pay a considerable price if they want to break in.

At the beginning, Veblen wanted to echo Giles from north to south. He sent troops to attack the territory loyal to the royal family in the east of the kingdom. As a result, the troops in the east may be good at defense but not good at offense. In front of the first fortress, the army had an absolute advantage, but they met and broke their heads, causing many jokes for no reason.

Because of the terrain blocked by the mountains in the East Border Basin, it is difficult to get in, and it is also difficult to get out. It is very difficult to supply and transport. Annoyed, the Duke of Veblen had to send troops to the south to join Giles' rebel army.

This put considerable pressure on the kingdom's army. Fortunately, since the beginning of this year, the equipment level of the kingdom's army has been greatly improved, so that the balance of war has not been tilted towards the rebels.

The improvement of equipment has benefited from the large-scale procurement by the Royal Government in the Northwest Gulf. Since the establishment of "Northwest Industry", the weapons production in the Northwest Gulf has advanced by leaps and bounds. Because of the revolutionary breakthrough in iron smelting technology, the blast furnace ironworks built in Arda, Bairding, and Emden successively provided a steady stream of iron ingots for large and small weapon workshops. The craftsmen inside worked in shifts. The sound of tinkling irons was non-stop day and night. Swords, spears, arrows, and armor gathered from various territories to Port Flanders, and then they were loaded onto ships along with other purchases by the kingdom government, such as grain, canned food, cloth, or ready-made clothes, and transported to the south. The ports under the direct control of the Royal Government are finally transported to the front line to arm batch after batch of recruits or replace the worn-out old equipment of veterans.

Due to the stimulation of a large number of orders, Alda-style factories have also appeared in other territories in the Northwest Gulf, and the interests have prompted people to actively seek all ways to increase production.

Weapon suppliers from other places are very eager, but there is nothing they can do. Under the same quality, weapons in the Northwest Gulf are always the cheapest, so the Royal Government always gives priority to placing orders with Northwest Industries.

Under such an impact, weapon manufacturers in other places were forced to take the high-end route—abandoning the production of ordinary iron armor, focusing on the production of plate armor, and selling them to knight lords and generals of all sizes.

Unlike ordinary iron armor, which is mainly made of wrought iron and equipped for big-headed soldiers, plate armor is made of steel plates, and the time it takes is extremely different. A workshop with 26 people can process nearly 1,600 pieces in 5 months. A set of armor, but a full set of high-end high-quality plate armor, but it takes half a year to polish, which is very time-consuming from beginning to end, especially for small pieces such as gloves, which need to be polished by hand alone, and the requirements for errors are also very high. High, otherwise it is likely to cause inconvenience to the wearer.

With the general level of craftsmanship of the craftsmen in the Northwest Gulf, it is not yet possible to produce such high-end goods whose surface is smooth enough to reflect the figure and can be called a work of art in all aspects, but they have achieved a real monopoly in low-end armor.

With the help of cheap but guaranteed quality and quantity of ordnance supplies, the kingdom has formed a huge army. Currently, the army confronting the rebels in the south has a scale of more than 70,000, of which nearly 50,000 soldiers can be used for front-line combat~www.novelhall .com~ Catherine and her generals attach great importance to the protection of low-level soldiers. The better the protection of soldiers, the higher their survival rate. Veterans who have experienced life-and-death battles, their combat experience is precious.

The other generals were annoyed that with such a powerful force, they should have been able to destroy the rebels terribly, but the battle did not go so smoothly.

The joining of Veblen was not the main reason. What really gave them a headache was a mysterious army in the rebel army. According to the captives, this rebel army was called the "Undead Army".

Just like its name, every time this army appears on the battlefield, there are exactly six thousand people, no more and no less. 6,000 people, as if no one died.

Of course, no one thinks that they are really immortal or can come back from the dead. What makes everyone wonder is how the other party can replenish quickly, because the soldiers of this army are so different - infinitely powerful and relentless. Fear of death cannot be replaced by ordinary soldiers who gnaw on black bread and rarely eat meat after a few days of training.

What's even more exaggerated is that according to the records on the battlefield, these guys behaved extremely brutally on the battlefield, and some soldiers even witnessed the terrifying scene of them tearing the flesh and blood of those who fought. They were simply a group of beasts obeying orders.

Fortunately, compared to this special unit, the other units of the rebel army are not so scary. Only elite troops can wear iron armor, and ordinary troops can only wear leather armor. No, it's far from the kingdom's army equipped with a large number of iron armor.

The so-called "undead army", after much deliberation, can only be attributed to the "rebel wizards" who have already spread in the barracks.