The world kisses me with pain and wants me to repay it with a song.

– Rabindranath Tagore (Indian poet, philosopher, and Indian nationalist)

After taking the Marquis of Besançon under his command, Bai Feng's first order to the Marquis of Besançon was to assemble all the blacksmiths in the province in the county town of Besançon in the name of the governor of Besançon Province to form an equipment forging center subordinate to the counteroffensive army.

In times of peace, even the high-ranking governors of the provinces did not use their power to forge weapons and equipment on a large scale, but this war with almost no end in sight made the front-line governors truly become the emperors of their provinces.

With the official order of the Marquis of Besançon, the blacksmiths of the five counties under the jurisdiction of the province of Besançon gathered from all directions to the county town of Besançon, and in just half a month, the number of blacksmiths gathered in the county town of Besançon reached 500.

These blacksmiths, who used to be mainly engaged in making agricultural tools and living iron, have little experience in crafting weapons and equipment, and if they are really allowed to build weapons and equipment, I am afraid that the quality of the finished products will not be as good as the defective products provided by the Imperial Military Department.

The reason why Bai Feng, who would not be untargeted, gathered them in Besançon County and set up the so-called equipment manufacturing center was only to hide people's eyes;

The quality of the weapons and equipment produced by the city of Rome every month is not much worse than that of the Royal Legion, and it is even better than the standard weaponry of the Royal Legion that has declined in quality at this stage.

The Feather Legion is fully equipped with the standard weapons and equipment of the Roman Youth Army, and in terms of weapons and equipment, it has an advantage over the Fire Legion of the Royal Legion after the decline in the quality of equipment;

The standard weapons and equipment of the Roman Youth Army were not conjured up by Bai Feng out of thin air, but forged from the armor shops of the Roman city; the armor shops, which have a large number of skilled swordsmiths and armor makers, have been continuously producing extremely sophisticated weapons and equipment for the city of Rome.

The real purpose of Bai Feng is to transfer some swordsmiths and armor makers from the armor shops in Rome City, and use them as the core to form an equipment forging center for the counterattack army, and gathering the blacksmiths in Besançon Province is just a means of disguise.

It turns out that the swordsmiths and armormakers in the armor shops in Rome City have a fixed establishment, even if Bai Feng, the governor of Rome City, comes forward, he can't directly draw swordsmiths and armormakers from the armor shops, he must buy them to take away the swordsmiths and armormakers.

There are two ways to buy swordsmiths and armormakers, the first is to buy for hire, the employment price of each swordsmith is 1,000 gold, and the employment value of each armormaker is 1,500 gold, and Bai Feng needs to pay a retainer once a year after hiring.

The second is the buyout purchase, where the purchase price for each swordsmith is 5,000 gold, and the purchase price for each armormaker is 8,000 gold;

Bai Feng, who was worried that he would not be able to spend the treasury funds, naturally chose the second buyout method to buy the skilled swordsmiths and armor makers, and the ten swordsmiths and ten armor makers spent a total of 130,000 gold of Bai Feng's treasury funds, but Bai Feng thought it was worth the money!

Bai Feng, who had thought that swordsmiths and armormakers would only create weapons and equipment, brought ten swordsmiths and ten armormakers to the newly built equipment manufacturing center in Besançon County, only to find that they could even pass on their skills to the blacksmiths of Besançon Province!

In this way, the newly built equipment manufacturing center can create sophisticated weapons and equipment for the army under Bai Feng's command on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can also continuously train more swordsmiths and armor makers, which is a great thing for Bai Feng.

The equipment manufacturing center, which consisted of ten swordsmiths, ten armor makers, and five hundred and twenty-four ordinary blacksmiths, was able to produce 500 sets of weapons and equipment every week, of which no less than 50 met the standard of weapons and equipment of the Roman youth army.

While preparing for the construction of the equipment manufacturing center, Bai Feng and the Marquis of Besançon also sent an application to the imperial capital; however, the Marquis of Besançon applied to the imperial prime minister for the establishment of an equipment manufacturing center, while Bai Feng applied to the imperial military department to replenish soldiers and food and grass materials.

The main responsibility of the Imperial Prime Minister is to deal with the affairs applied for by the governors of various provinces of the Empire, and the Marquis of Besançon secretly established an equipment manufacturing center in the name of Bai Feng, and on the surface, he still needs to apply to the Imperial Prime Minister, and only with the consent of the Imperial Prime Minister can he legally set it up.

How could the Duke of Patel, who was well aware of the situation in the northern part of the Empire, refuse the application of the Marquis of Besançon? Before more than 500 provincial blacksmiths gathered in the county town of Besançon, a permit order from the Imperial Prime Minister was delivered to the Marquis of Besançon.

In comparison, Bai Feng's application for supplementary soldiers and grain and grass materials was not so easy to obtain, and Duke Kulun, the Imperial Minister of Military Affairs, was unwilling to grant Bai Feng more supplementary soldiers and grain and grass materials.

Fortunately, the Bai family's ally, Prince Pros, was quite reliable, and he complained about Bai Feng's counterattack led by Bai Feng several times in the court; finally, Charlemagne, who couldn't stand it, personally ordered the Duke of Kulun to allocate 15,000 additional soldiers and a batch of grain and grass materials to Bai Feng.

The food and grass required for three months by 15,000 recruits and 300,000 troops were nothing to the Imperial Military Department, which controlled the empire's nearly three million troops, not to mention that Charlemagne had personally ordered it, and Duke Cullen had no choice but to carry it out.

By the time this batch of recruits and food and grass supplies arrived in Besançon, it was already early March, and nearly two months had passed, and the number of battlefield ghosts and spellcasters under Bai Feng's command had increased by thirty each, bringing the total to one hundred and one hundred and eighty respectively.

After this period of rapid development, the output of the equipment manufacturing center has increased from the initial 500 sets of weapons and equipment per week to the current 1,000 sets of weapons and equipment per week, doubling the output!

Among the five standing corps, the 56th, 57th, and 58th legions, which were not yet reorganized, had all reached full strength, and the recruits who were added to these three legions were all homeless young men carefully selected by the Marquis of Baifeng and Besançon, and their combat effectiveness was not inferior to that of the new recruits of the military headquarters.

The newly built 4,000 sets of weapons and equipment with a higher quality than the weapons and equipment of the military department will be supplemented to Renard's 58th Army Corps on a priority basis; this is also Bai Feng's promise to Renard, and the other four army corps have not yet carried out large-scale weapons and equipment replacement.

The 500 most sophisticated sets of Roman youth army weapons and equipment produced by the equipment manufacturing center were divided into five equal parts by Bai Feng, and were distributed to the five legion commanders such as Louis and Renard respectively to equip the personal soldiers who protected their safety.

With the continuous expansion of the scale and output of the equipment manufacturing center, it is only a matter of time before the complete refitting of the five standing legions is completed, but will the cavalry of the Jurchen tribe give Bai Feng the opportunity to slowly improve the combat effectiveness of the army?