Iron Powder and Spellcaster

The situation of the war took a turn for the worse, which was shocking.

The Hedians were defeated like a mountain. The defeated troops who failed to attack the city rolled back into their own formation and actually overwhelmed the Terton army.

Winters looked at tens of thousands of cavalry trampling each other and scattering like birds and beasts. He never expected that victory would come so suddenly.

Andre was currently not in the fort, so Lieutenant Colonel Jashka asked Pierre to lead Dussac's light cavalry to follow the enemy for reconnaissance.

Soon, Mr. Mitchell Jr., who had been promoted to temporary sergeant, brought back information: the Manzi Banner was in chaos, had been defeated, and was fleeing westward in chaos.

The situation of the battle was clear, and the relieved Platoans cheered, and some rough men even wiped away tears. Everyone was so depressed when they were surrounded by Hud barbarians, and now they are so excited.

Winters had no time to celebrate, he was busy summoning the captain of ten for questioning.

A messenger came to him - Lieutenant Colonel Jessica asked all the officers to go over for a meeting.

Rushing to the small board room that served as the brigade headquarters, he found that in addition to Jessica, Bud and Mason, there were also two centurions who were originally stationed here: Lieutenant Otiba [Platu] , Second Lieutenant Sanu [Veneta nationality].

Winters winked at Sanu, pulled a chair over and sat down.

The atmosphere was very relaxed, who would have thought? The menacing Terdun tribe turned out to be so useless.

"Not to us! Not to us! Lord! Glory to your name!"

Bursts of singing came into the house, and the Platuan people were singing hymns together.

The defeat of so many enemies at such a small cost can only be explained by miracles for believers.

"If the Hed wants to run away, let him run away." When everyone gathered, Jeshka got straight to the point: "Don't chase, continue to strengthen the fortifications."

Winters was puzzled at first: Hurd's army was defeated and they should be pursued fiercely without giving them a chance to regroup.

But Lieutenant Colonel Jessica will not target without aim...

After a moment's thought, Winters straightened his head and laughed dumbly: "You mean... the Hurds are faking defeat?"

The smiles on the other lieutenants' faces quickly disappeared, their expressions became serious, and their bodies leaned forward involuntarily.

"Pretend to be defeated, lure the defenders out of the fortified city to pursue them, and then wait for an opportunity to gather together to encircle and annihilate them. This is a common trick of the Hed people." Jashka pointed at Lieutenant Otiba and asked, "Are you from Plato?"

Otiba was a little confused: "Huh? Yes, my home is in the Castle of Kings."

"Then you should know how the last Grand Duke died."

"I heard it from the teacher... but it was when Lu was a child."

Jessica pointed to a few Veneta people beside her: "Tell them about it."

Lieutenant Otiba scratched his head and stood up, briefly telling this allusion that the Plato soldiers were familiar with.

The story is very simple: It was another disaster year, and the Hed people invaded eastward in a large scale, burning, killing and looting all the way, and finally reached the castle of the kings.

The castles of the kings were built by the Grand Dukes of Plato for more than ten generations, and the city defenses are impregnable. The barbarians were unable to attack for a long time, and they fought among themselves for the spoils of war. Finally, they simply fled.

Seeing this situation, Bello IV, the Grand Duke of Plato, immediately led his troops to attack. Both sides chased me for three days and three nights.

Finally, at the mouth of the Kalga River, the Palatine army, which had underestimated the enemy's advance and lost all its energy, ran into the Hittites' carbine.

When the massacre was over, the Kalga River was filled with the corpses of the Plattus.

From then on, the Platuan people did not eat fish from the Kalga River, because those fish had eaten the flesh of the Platuan people.

…

To elaborate, the impact of this battle was extremely far-reaching: the Grand Duke and seven earls were killed, resulting in the complete annihilation of the patrilineal line of the Hetumoger family.

Plato's crown went round and round, and finally fell into the hands of Bello IV's cousin, Richard IV, who was not yet called the Mad King at that time.

Richard IV, who suffered from periodic financial bankruptcy, found the land of galloping horses as a treasure. He used Plato as a money bag and ruthlessly drained more than 250,000 ducats every year.

Wealth continued to flow out, and Plato began to decline continuously.

The border defenses were no longer able to be maintained, and the Hed tribes invaded Palato every year to plunder, and they called it "Daqiu Valley".

But the emperor ignored this and ignored it.

From the nobles to the common people in the principality, dissatisfaction and resentment towards Richard IV were growing day by day. Beneath the surface of loyalty, there is actually a turbulent undercurrent.

So when the citizens of Piedmont revolted, Plato, who was supposed to be an absolute royalist, not only failed to suppress them, but instead became a source of troops for the "rebels".

A large number of lower-class Palatine nobles changed their names, recruited friends and companions to defect to the alliance army, and rebelled at their own expense.

In the early, middle and late stages of the Sovereignty War, the Alliance army relied on the Platoans to carry their cavalry units.

Ned Smith discovered that there were many strange warriors in the army with bad names, claiming to be from the Piedmont, but speaking with plateau accents.

These people brought their own horses, weapons, and armor to join the army. They did not like to obey orders, and they especially did not respect commanders with civilian backgrounds.

However, all of them were highly skilled in martial arts, would not run away without military pay, and risked their lives in battles, as if they had a sworn hatred for the Imperial people.

It is precisely because of its great contributions during the Sovereignty War that the Republic of Plato can enjoy a political status in the alliance comparable to that of the United Provinces and Veneta.

If Bello IV lived until the sovereignty war broke out, he would definitely send troops to help his cousin suppress the rebels, even if he wanted to prevent himself from being burned.

Under attack from both sides, the newly established republican regime of the United Provinces was destined to be quickly strangled.

If the people of the United Provinces can't even hold on to the early situation, they won't be able to wait for the Veneta people to join the war.

But there are no what-ifs in history. Who would have thought that a young man's reckless decision to slap his forehead would eventually lead to the birth of five republics and a "great" alliance?

…

Back to this meeting.

Otiba spread his hands to indicate that he had finished speaking.

Mason asked hesitantly: "If the Hud people just pretended to surrender, wouldn't it be too risky? They have killed a lot of people!"

"Whether it's a real defeat or a false defeat, in a word." Jessica paused for a moment, looked around the five lieutenants, and said word by word: "The tiger will never come down from the mountain!"

He then explained: "To defend this bridge, the initiative is in our hands. If he comes to attack, we will kill him; if he runs, we will not chase him. Use silence to stop and not give the Hedians an opportunity to take advantage of." ."

What the lieutenant colonel said made sense, and the five lieutenants naturally had no objections.

He was also a little uneasy about asking Winters to leave the fort and pursue him.

However, the strategy of "the tiger does not come down from the mountain" made Winters a little regretful. He originally wanted to take advantage of the defeat of the Hed people to take out the Tianjin people.

Now it seems that it is safer to let the golden man continue to be buried in the soil.

Now that the internal opinions have been unified, the Jessica Brigade took action immediately.

Bader led his men to continue to widen and deepen the trenches and insert horse-repelling stakes;

Otiba and Sanu led people to reinforce and heighten the fort wall;

Mason was more unlucky. The lieutenant colonel became angry when he remembered that he had taken the wrong route, and ordered him to clean the battlefield, recover the shells, and drag away the corpses.

Weapons, armor, leather robes, cloths, boots, accessories...all valuable and useful items are recycled.

The dead Hurds were stripped naked and thrown directly into the river, but they ended up naked, empty, and clean;

No troops were allowed to leave the camp except for sending a small number of Dussac's light cavalry to reconnoiter the enemy's situation.

Lieutenant Colonel Jessica showed his intentions to the Herds openly: Whatever plots you have, I won't even look at them. Anyway, every second that passes, the more lives you need to fill this bridgehead.

The other lieutenants were busy with construction, and Winters was busy with psychological construction.

He gathered together the musketeers who were responsible for rotating fire, and began to call the names according to the note:

"John of Wolftown!"

"Ryan of Bright Valley!"

"..."

In the entire walled fortress, there were only a few literate people.

This made Winters deeply realize the importance of universal education. If the captains knew how to read, they could record it themselves, and Winters only had to summarize it.

But all his ten captains were illiterate, and even the list had to be copied by Winters himself.

That's why he divided the musketeers into ten teams, because people have ten fingers. The captain who supervised the musketeers could not read and could only remember people with his fingers.

The musketeers whose names were called came out one after another. There were nearly 340 musketeers and crossbowmen participating in the rotation shooting. Winters only named 33 names.

Not knowing what the centurion wanted to do, the thirty-three musketeers stood in a row uneasily.

"These people!" Winters paused deliberately and declared with emphasis: "They are the ones who can fire the gun in every six and a half rounds of alternating shooting! Well done!"

"Award!" Winters waved his hand.

Charles and Heinrich carried a bag of small, rattling silver coins and handed them out from one end of the row to the other, three to each person.

Winters led the crowd to applaud again, and many of the Six-Gang Musketeers were so embarrassed that they could only stare at the tips of their shoes.

Then came fifty five-gun musketeers, one small silver coin each, and no cheers.

The third batch was seventy-eight four-gun musketeers, with no bonuses and no applause.

"The remaining people!" Winters slapped the note and stared at the small half of the musketeers left in the open space: "Six rounds of shooting, you can only fire three shots at most. Some people didn't even make a sound!"

There was deathly silence in the middle of the clearing. Many of the Musketeers lowered their heads in shame.

"Look at me! Don't bow your head!" Winters scolded with a hard heart, and his cold voice resounded through the fortress through the magic amplification: "Killing without teaching! That's called cruelty! So I am trying to reason with you now. Every one of you is young If you fire a round of gun, you may kill one less enemy. If you kill one less enemy, you may kill one more comrade. We are all sons and daughters, and if you kill someone, you must pay with your life!"

The entire fortress was now silent, even the spearmen who had nothing to do with it were listening with bated breath.

"Some of you will think it's unfair. I fired one less shot? How could one more person die?" Winters raised three fingers: "Three times! So I will give you three chances. Three battles, if you pass the round once If you can't do it, then you deserve to die! The only thing waiting for you is the gallows!"

Everyone couldn't help but look at the makeshift gallows at the edge of the clearing. The noose was dangling in the wind, waiting for the killing.

Winters shouted: "Bring the gun!"

Charles put an arquebus into Winters' hands.

"I'll fire six shots. If three shots don't go off, I'll put the noose around my own neck!"

Ciel set up six Hurd helmets twenty paces away from Winters.

With all the Platoans watching, Winters expertly loaded, aimed, fired, and reloaded.

Six rounds of continuous fire were fired, and all six guns rang out, and six Hurd iron helmets were shot down.

At first, everyone in Plato was silent. When Winters knocked down the second iron helmet, some people started to cheer.

After that, every time Winters knocked off an iron helmet, the Platoans cheered together, each sound louder than the previous one.

When the sixth iron helmet was shot away in response, the cheers reached its peak, and even the one-eyed colonel who was watching from a distance was applauding.

After six shots, Winters threw the gun away. Ciel caught it firmly, his palms turning red.

Six gunshots were fired, all six shots hit, and no one refused.

"I will never force you to do something I can't do. If I can do it, you can do it too." The power of magic made Winters' voice suppress the cheers of the crowd.

His gaze swept across every musketeer in the open space: "Remember, you only have three chances. And you have already wasted one!"

If we follow the military law of the Qi Army, let alone three times, in actual combat, as long as the gunfire fails to fire once, the captain will directly cut off the gunman's ears. After the battle, the gunman without ears will be beheaded immediately in public. If Mr. Qian is present, he can be beheaded on the spot. Winters's men were all militiamen and were new to this tactic, so he relaxed some restrictions a little.

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