Lord Harland

The terrain of Marcel Castle is dangerous, and three rivers converge here, forming a natural barrier. The city wall was built along the river. The wall was thick and solid. Only one wall needed to be defended by heavy troops.

This castle is the capital of the Duke of Marcel, and is home to about 60,000 noble coalition troops. The food reserves in the city exceed 100,000 tons, enough to feed the 60,000 defenders for two to three years.

The most critical point is that a secret weapon is installed on the top of the city. The six magic crystal cannons purchased by Duke Marcel from the Kingdom of Harland have been installed on the city head that requires heavy defense.

In order to better utilize the power of the magic crystal cannon, the Kingdom of Harland provided excellent logistical services.

Richard transferred four officers and eight non-commissioned officers from an artillery brigade to help Duke Marcel train the personnel. This group of artillery troops is carefully selected, and each one is the backbone of the company. The leader, Dirac, has been promoted to the rank of major, and his promotion to the rank of captain is imminent.

When the war broke out, the instructors from the Harland Kingdom could no longer evacuate.

Moreover, when they entered the Kingdom of Delon, the twelve instructors had also received training from the intelligence department and knew that they needed to perform some special tasks to fight on behalf of the Duke of Marcel.

When the battle broke out, Dirac, the captain of the instructor team, decisively took over the command and commanded the magic crystal cannon in combat.

The command of artillery requires a lot of parabolic calculations and places very high demands on officers.

To calculate the parabola, variables such as air friction and wind speed also need to be considered, and the acceleration of gravity needs to be measured first. If you want to measure the acceleration of gravity, you also need some basic knowledge in physics.

The Harland Mages Association had mastered this knowledge thirty years ago and could pierce the window paper without too much difficulty. But for a country like the Delong Kingdom, calculating the impact point of the cannonball is like a miracle and cannot meet this requirement at all.

The Dawn Plane is an extraordinary plane with extraordinary power, extremely rigid class structure, and a very conservative social atmosphere. Richard established education for thirty years, but no one in the nearby countries or lords was willing to follow his example.

King Anton wanted to learn from Richard's reforms, which also triggered cruel internal strife in the country.

After all, for nobles, monopolizing knowledge is their instinct, and spreading knowledge does not meet their requirements.

In fact, ever since Richard was promoted to Duke, the nobles of Grant Kingdom have sent many people to study in Harland territorial schools, hoping to secretly learn Harland's advanced knowledge.

However, Harland has a political review and confidentiality system, making it difficult for outsiders to enroll in school.

Elementary schools and junior high schools are slightly better, because the professor's knowledge is not sensitive, and you can gain access through connections and connections. High schools, technical secondary schools and other schools are closely watched by Richard, who often sends mid-level and high-level mages to inspect, and occasionally recruit students. It is difficult for a corrupt person to escape the power word spell of the patrolling mage.

In addition, the intelligence agencies have planted many spies in schools, and the bureaucrats in the education system are also very aware of this.

According to the severity of Richard's treatment of officials, the bureaucrats did not dare to disregard their future, relax the standards of political review, and recruit people of unknown origin.

Although Richard deduced the law of universal gravitation and measured the acceleration of gravity thirty years ago, the key knowledge was not leaked to the outside due to the strict confidentiality system.

The magical academic community in the Dawn Plane has not yet come into contact with this new knowledge.

After all, given the situation in the Kingdom of Harland, ballistics calculations are only involved in high school.

The high school students led by Harland are actually on the list of the intelligence department. Most of them are placed in the military, government, scientific research institutes and other departments. They are not allowed to leave the territory easily and have no communication with the outside world.

After more than thirty years of development since Richard started running the territory, the Kingdom of Harland has trained thousands of high school students. Those who can calculate ballistics and serve as artillery commanders are not uncommon.

However, the Delong Kingdom has no tradition of attaching importance to scholars, and only a handful of nobles have mastered some basic mathematics. Even if the instructors from the Harland Kingdom try their best to teach it, there is not even a talent pool to master advanced mathematics knowledge in the country.

Duke Marcel spent a lot of money to recruit, and barely a noble with a good mathematical foundation could meet the requirements. However, if he wanted to truly command the artillery well, he would need to supplement his mathematical foundation.

Duke Marcel's officers could not be counted on, so Dirac had no choice but to take action personally with the instructors from the Kingdom of Harland.

Although Dirac's physical talent was average and he had not yet been promoted to a professional in his thirties, he was very talented in learning. While studying, he easily passed into high school and was then recruited into the artillery unit. Although his physical fitness is average and his combat effectiveness is not strong, he has been promoted to a major officer and served as an artillery squadron leader thanks to his excellent mind.

This time, he was selected by the superior department to serve as the leader of the overseas instructor team and perform secret missions.

Seeing that the Anton Kingdom led troops to raid, Dirac decisively ordered the artillery to open fire. Calibrated with a magic hot air balloon, it only fired three rounds of artillery shells, which directly hit the military formation where King Anton was located.

Exploding shrapnel flew in all directions, mowing down more than ten people in an instant. The power of the shell explosion has exceeded the three-ring magic fireball technique.

An ordinary three-ring magician can release up to four or five fireballs in one battle. And a magic crystal cannon, as long as there are enough shells, can fire hundreds of shells in a battle.

The intensity of firepower projected by an artillery squadron is far greater than that of a mage regiment of 300 people.

Under Dirac's command, the six magic crystal cannons fired continuously, about three rounds every minute.

In just ten minutes, Dirac had already poured out hundreds of cannonballs.

The magic crystal cannon once again appeared on the battlefield, instantly panicking the army of the Kingdom of Delon. In the past few years, the army of the Kingdom of Delon had suffered a lot in the face of this new weapon.

In ten minutes of shelling, 60% hit the Delong Kingdom's military formation, directly defeating four infantry brigades and causing about 2,000 casualties to the Central Guards.

The city walls were not even touched, and the number of casualties exceeded 2,000. This unfavorable situation caused the morale of the army of the Delon Kingdom to become very low. They barely managed to get close to the city wall, but were heavily killed by crossbows and alchemy bombs at the top of the city.

The magicians who were among the siege troops also suffered about twenty casualties in this failed battle.

In desperation, the Anton Kingdom had to withdraw from the range of the magic crystal cannon.

Although the magic crystal cannon is powerful, it has immediate effects in battle. But the consumption is also very serious. Not only does it require the consumption of magic crystals, but also twenty serfs need to be paid to fire one cannonball.

At this critical time, Duke Marcel had no regard for population.

Seeing that there were not many cannonballs consumed, Duke Marcel sold 400,000 people at once with a wave of his hand, and exchanged a large amount of baggage from Harland. There were about 6,000 cannonballs alone, and four alchemy bombs were also purchased. Thousands of pieces.

This kind of reserve can already fight twenty fierce battles.

With sufficient ammunition reserves, Marcel Castle immediately became rock solid and easily blocked King Anton's army.

Under the blunt force of the fortified city, King Anton was once again extremely uncomfortable.

In desperation, he could only divide his troops to plunder the surroundings of Marcel Castle, hoping to force the defenders of Marcel Castle to leave the city to fight.

Duke Marcel is also a veteran and understands the situation very clearly. His command style was also very conservative. He was as steady as an old dog in fighting. He refused to go out to fight in the field and relied on the fortifications of Marcel Castle.

At the same time, both Dukes Peron and Ram purchased large quantities of magic hot air balloons from Harland through human trade.

As of January 3284 in the Dawn Calendar, the two Dukes had ordered more than 300 magic hot air balloons, and the number of people they paid was as high as about 350,000.

At this moment, the civil war in the Delong Kingdom has broken out for sixteen months. In the first year, the Harland Kingdom purchased nearly 930,000 serfs. In the second year, the harvest was still impressive, with 780,000 serfs purchased from the Delong Kingdom.

In less than two years, it had a population of more than 1.7 million.

The total population of the Delong Kingdom has lost about six million.

As the magic hot air balloons sold by the Harland Kingdom gained combat effectiveness, they continued to appear on the front lines and fought several brutal aerial battles with the Pegasus Knights.

Although in the air battle, the Pegasus Knights were better than the magic hot air balloon group, the enemy could continue to replenish them, but they suffered severe blood loss. In the continuous fighting, although they shot down more than 200 groups of magic hot air balloons, the Pegasus Knights' The battle losses have exceeded 70 people, which is about one-seventh of the total number of people.

In desperation, Mensaro, the leader of the Pegasus Knights, could only reduce the frequency of reconnaissance and blockade, and wrote a letter to Special Envoy Rosen, requesting that his battle losses be made up.

After receiving Mensaro's letter, Rosen suddenly became worried. Although his authority is not small, the army cannot be supplemented at all.

Now is the time when the Holy Glory Empire is shrinking in an all-round way. The flying troops have been lost and it will be difficult to replenish them in a short time.

But the Kingdom of Delon must maintain the situation, otherwise the magic hot air balloons sold by Harland will continue to flow, and sooner or later the Pegasus Knights will be drained of blood.

Rosen racked his brains and wrote many letters to coordinate with Count Truss, and finally transferred forty Pegasus knights from the red moon plane garrison to supplement the front line of the Kingdom of Delon.

Now the Holy Radiance Empire only has 40,000 troops stationed in the Red Moon Plane, and its influence has dropped a lot, even worse than the Kingdom of Harland.

There are two legions stationed in the Red Moon plane, and the replenishment of technical arms is very slow. It has not been full for many years. There are only 700 Pegasus cavalry in total, and their combat effectiveness is far inferior to that of the Wyvern Knights of the Kingdom of Harland.

It is already very difficult for the Red Moon plane garrison to add forty Pegasus knights to the Delong Kingdom's front line.

But for Harland, making three hundred magic hot air balloons is relatively simple. With the factory running at full speed, it only takes four months at most.

If a war breaks out, the civilian market is compressed, and production capacity is increased at all costs, the magic hot air balloon factory can be expanded three times, and four hundred magic airships and two thousand magic hot air balloons can be manufactured a year.

In addition to the magic airship troops, the Harland Kingdom's army also includes wyverns and griffins.

The Flying Dragon Knights are the most elite force in the Kingdom of Harland, with a total number of more than 180 people, including 120 flying dragons, and the rest are logistics and reserve personnel. The members of this army are carefully selected from the entire army. There are about a hundred professionals above the fourth level. The soldiers all wear the rank of major or lieutenant colonel. The average military age of the officers and soldiers is as high as twenty-one years.

Some of the backbone have even longer military service than Richard. The average salary of officers and soldiers is eight times that of ordinary soldiers, and the annual military pay and subsidies are close to 20,000 gold coins.

Of course, human knights don't spend much money, but raising wyverns requires a lot of resources. This kind of high-level Warcraft must eat Warcraft meat almost every day. If there is no Warcraft meat, it can only use magic crystals to prepare nutrient solutions.

Fortunately, the Harland Kingdom controls the upper reaches of the Black River and has a huge resource of snow crystal fish monsters. By hunting snow crystal fish, it can provide three thousand tons of snow crystal fish meat every year. Enough to feed a wyvern and a griffon.

If magic crystals were used to prepare nutrient solution, the cost of maintaining this bipedal flying dragon knights would be more than 150,000 gold coins, almost equivalent to half of the legion.

After years of development, the Lion Knights of the Kingdom of Harland have expanded to three squadrons, with nearly 240 Lion Knights. At the Gryphon Breeding Base in the Eagle Mountains, there are nearly 130 female Gryphons and cubs.

After more than twenty years of hard breeding and population expansion, the number of gryphons has increased by about twenty times.

Due to the cost of breeding, Richard planned to expand the number of gryphon cavalry to 300. The number of the Flying Dragon Knights increased to about 150.

Unless the catch of snow crystal fish increases again, Harland's leadership fee income will not be able to support it.

Without enough monster meat, the annual consumption of a gryphon is equivalent to the cost of raising three hundred gold coins. Flying dragons are more expensive, consuming hundreds of standard magic crystals a year, and the breeding cost is as high as one thousand gold coins.

The consumption of three hundred lion knights is already equivalent to fifteen thousand auxiliary soldiers and nearly eight thousand regular troops. One hundred and twenty bipedal flying dragon knights, the maintenance cost is equivalent to more than half of the legion.

In the past few years, even the Lion Kingdom only maintained a strength of 300 lion cavalry. Even if the Kingdom of Harland is rich and wealthy, it cannot sustain unlimited military expansion.

Now that there are orders from the nobles of the Kingdom of Delon, the military industry department of the Kingdom of Harland has accelerated its operations. In order to transport war resources nearby, the Rex Province has made comprehensive moves.

Under Martin's promotion, a local arsenal was successfully relocated, and the steel plant supporting the arsenal has also been put into operation.

Even Ricks prospered and relied on local finance to build a railway from Berenberg to Cologne, a distance of about 200 kilometers.

Cologne Castle is located at the junction of the Rex Province and the two duchies of Visia and Crean. Due to the civil war in the Kingdom of Delon, it has formed a large material transfer point.

In just sixteen months, this area has grown from a desert to a population of 30,000.

After the railway was built, it became an important stronghold on the border of Rex Province. Some time ago, Martin also added four squadrons to garrison in this area. Now the garrison strength has exceeded 2,000.