Whether Ashbourne II knew war - this is a complex question. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

First of all, war in the eyes of the West Coast is not the same thing as war in the eyes of the Empire. Even if a powerful place on the west coast such as West Valier clashed with the surrounding kingdoms such as Maximilian, the "big battles" of a certain thousand-man scale that West Valier historians talk about would only call them "border conflicts" if they were replaced by Ottolo or Padrosi, and they would only call them "border conflicts", not even real wars.

And a major war similar to the Battle of Acasta, which was like the collapse of Sivalier, with tens of thousands of troops, could only be regarded as a conventional war for the Empire - of course, it was important, but not as soon as it was defeated, as in the case of Sivalier.

Deeper down, Sivaliers fell into chaos after the defeat of Acasta, and the root cause was the excessive emphasis on cavalry before the war. The traditional Sivalier view was that cavalry could defeat everything, and that the policy of a few elites was adopted from the king to the lord. They only cared about and only cultivated noble cavalry, which was predictably strong in a single battle. However, once faced with a multi-front battle, the shortcomings of the army were revealed, and since the defeat of the Sivalier cavalry regiment in the battle of Acasta, the kingdom, which had relied entirely on cavalry, had already lost its army in name only.

To put it mercilessly, the war of the people of the West Coast is completely chaotic and casual, without considering objective factors and not learning advanced ideas from other countries, and only knows how to blindly use inertial thinking. If you have an advantage in one thing, you can ignore everything else. This kind of thinking and this kind of war is not professional and orderly, it is more like the result of a collision of great luck, so victory naturally cannot be replicated. And Ahibon II, who was born as a West Coaster, grew up as a West Coaster, and was good at this form of warfare.

Both know about war, but also know nothing about it.

The reason why he was able to defeat the Northern Army so smoothly and quickly was simply because of the greater number of troops under his command. He didn't know tactics or strategy, and even if he had read similar books, all he could do to command such a large army was to suppress them and order them to keep approaching. Whether it was logistics or the treatment of the wounded and the command of the troops, no one was in charge of all affairs, and the nobles could barely say that the militia was basically in a state of self-destruction, and the Southern coalition army was only victorious because of its greater numbers, and won victory after victory, and won battle after battle.

Like other precarious West Coast nobles, Ahibon II was short-sighted and narrow-minded, focusing only on immediate interests rather than the long term. And he's used to seeing the world this way, and doesn't think he needs to change anything.

- Because, isn't he victorious?

There is no need to change because it has always worked.

There is no need to change because they have never suffered a real catastrophe.

The southern aristocrats of Avenella, who were proud of their aristocracy and took all the rights they enjoyed for granted, still held their heads high today, and their tall horses and bright armor were still held high.

"Look, the invincible Ottolo Empire, the heavy infantry sent by the world's greatest power, has been brutally annihilated by the enemy, and we are powerless to resist under our iron hooves, and we are losing ground one after another!"

"Look! The traitor and thief who boasted himself to the heavens as if he were the reincarnation of the founding emperor of the Lamanite Empire. Now I have to flee in a hurry, like the mouse that saw the cat and the jackal who saw the dragon!"

Fueled by an unprecedented burst of self-confidence, the nobles of the Confederate alliance even began to question Prince Edward's previous defeat of Sivalier at Acasta - "It must have been nothing more than coincidence and luck." They say this, completely unaware that this statement can be applied to themselves.

The Southern coalition forces are still advancing, and the road ahead of the Nella Forest Corridor is getting wider. They were about to get out of the area, and the next goal was to recapture the Dordogne - how the spoils should be distributed, and the share that had been stolen and burned by those fellows had to be taken back. The aristocrats began to plot like this in private, completely oblivious to the fact that there were more commoners in the Dordogne who had nothing to do with the battle.

Quietly, quietly, like a storm that is gradually taking shape, something appears.

The nobles didn't notice and didn't care, they were just bent on reclaiming the loot that Dordogne would get later.

The turning point began at noon on July 17.

The Northern Army, which had been defeated and scattered since the beginning of July, had taken up a number of strongholds along the corridor of the Neila Forest. As the knights and sergeants stationed in the territory either defected to Ashibern II early in the morning or joined the Northern Army, the knights' forts in the corridors of the Nera Forest became uninhabited cities, just in time to be used by the remnants of the fleeing Northern Army.

The Confederate forces were in hot pursuit throughout the first half of July, and the refugees and junior mercenaries who had defected to the Confederate army had nowhere to flee even if they wanted to. The well-concealed Neila Forest is rugged and difficult to navigate, and the smooth roads of the Neira Forest Corridor are not comparable to the cavalry of the Southern Alliance. By chance, these men, who had escaped from Edward's command in an attempt to save their lives, became the first victims of the decisive battle.

One by one, the Knights' Castles they occupied were easily breached, and the brief encounters with the large forces of the Northern Army invariably ended in the victory of the Southern Alliance. Everything seems to fall into place.

-- Until now.

"Smack!--Woo-woo-grab-"

With twisted hair and beard tangled around his dirty face, the Southern militiaman, who had been struck in the right place in the forehead, let go of his club and fell on his back.

"Come over to Lao Tzu, come here, we are short of people here, come here!" Unlike the Northern Army, which had well-trained sergeants, the nobles of the Southern Coalition Army disdained to do this, so they randomly assigned a few peasants as the leaders of the squad. And even the nobles themselves don't know anything about war, so naturally you don't expect these militia centurions to understand some tactical points.

-- Who are you calling, where are you coming, who is shouting?

The chaotic battlefield was filled with all kinds of sounds, so the basic information of "direction" and "person" must be included in the transmission of military orders, but the peasants did not know this, they only took it for granted that the person they were shouting to knew that they were shouting at each other, and they knew who they were, and they only knew in their minds where the place of "coming" was, which was completely unspoken.

And that's one of the reasons for the chaos.

"Boom-grab-" "cough--hiss-" The opponent showed a completely different quality from those opponents in the previous days.

Even though he was just a militia centurion who didn't know how to command, shouting on the battlefield was still a dangerous option.

The vanguard militia of the Southern Coalition besieging Fort Knights was stuck beneath the small lakeside fortress, and they were thrown into disarray. And whoever their opponent is - the other side is happy to see this chaos continue.

Their arrows are precise and deadly, killing those who speak in the chaos of the battlefield in an attempt to restore order or deliver orders, while others shoot sparse arrows that keep the peasants out of the way. With the exception of the first and second waves, which were fairly orderly, with a powerful rain of arrows, the number of Confederate militia killed far more of the Confederate militia in the remaining hours than those killed by the arrows.

"Stuck?!" "Woo-yes, yes, Your Majesty-" One of the knights who had come to report with trepidation cried out in fright, at the outrage of Ashbon II, and reported in a trembling voice, while cursing in his heart the fact that his lord in charge of the front had sent himself out as a substitute for the king because he was afraid of the king.

"How long have you been fighting. Ashbourne II sat in his chair and looked down at him from above. He did not lose his temper, and even the previously high-pitched tone returned to calm, but this did not make the knight's inner tension any less, for the king had killed two counts, three viscounts, and more than twenty knights in the past month and a half—almost the vast majority of the nobles in a duke's county—just because they disagreed with him.

Most of these men came from the southern territory of the Nella Forest Corridor, which was implicated by the dead Grand Duke Dehart, and after the king took control of the Grand Duke's army, the other nobles were happy to see the men of this faction take on all the king's wrath as shields. Not surprisingly, for Ashbourne II, the men sent to lead the "most discardable" militia as front-line commanders - that is, the upper lords of the knights - were of course also from this faction.

"One day—" said Ashiburn II in a gloomy tone, in the midst of the knight's thoughts, "just one day, and you came and told me that I was stuck?"

"But your majesty, they didn't even get close to the city gate, and they were blocked by the low wall on the perimeter. "Perhaps it was the soul of the dead Grand Duke Dehart who cared for the people that the knight somehow had the courage to speak to the king. "So what—" But there was not a hint of emotion in Ashbourne II's elongated tone: "It's just a knight's fort, and how many men can be stationed in it?10?150?"

"There are fifteen thousand of you. He gripped the handle of the chair with his left hand, his eyes wide open, and he pointed his big withered hand at him, and said word by word in a voice that seemed to come out of his teeth, "Don't tell me you're stuck. ”

"Your Majesty...... We need trebuchets, or sacrifice will-" I don't know where the courage came from, the knight subconsciously wanted to retort, but the moment he raised his head, he met the nobles of some other faction behind him, and another young knight looked at him with a little anxiety. It was like a bucket of cold water poured over his head, and he swallowed back the words that would kill him, but he hung his head, bowed heavily, and then turned and ran towards the outside of the dark blue royal tent.

――

The knight, who had returned to the front, reported the king's answer to his lord, and the militiamen, who had not yet recovered from the previous failed siege, had to take up their weapons and attack again.

They launched a second round of attacks in the evening, and at first they managed to climb over the low wall, but the distance from the low wall to the women's wall suddenly became more dangerous. Using the battlements of the female wall as cover, the archers unleashed a terrifying rain of arrows. And when the brightest and largest moon in the sky, the moon of Sifink's magic rises, the darkness disperses and the militia exposes themselves.

An arrow piercing the heart, such a quick death, is a mercy for them.

As if they were so cold-blooded that they couldn't perceive anything, the enemy's archers, who were clearly skillful, deliberately aimed at their abdomen and lower body, causing many wounds and making the already exhausted Southern Coalition militia have to listen to the wails everywhere in the dark.

The words of crying out for my mother and begging for my life were like the whispers of demons, eating away at what little morale was left of exhaustion—and even more cruel than that, when someone desperately climbed over the low wall to save their mortally wounded companion, the archers killed him with cold blood, and then left the old man to continue wailing on the ground.

The siege lasted until five o'clock in the morning, because of the lack of adequate rest for nearly 24 hours, coupled with great terror. A small rebellion broke out among the militias on the front lines of the Southern Coalition, but they were quickly suppressed again, and some escaped in the darkness of the night.

For a day and a night, even a hundred times the force could not gnaw this hard bone. But the nobles of the Southern Coalition did not find anything strange - it was only because the king would not use his precious siege equipment to attack such a small place, and it was natural that it would take time to fill them with human life.

Thinking so, they stayed in the rear and let their militiamen rush forward one after another.

The ravines were gradually filled, and the gap between the low wall outside and the ground was flattened by the pile of dead bodies, and people could already step on the corpses of their comrades and directly cross the first wall - but this had lasted for two days and two nights, and the moment the first wave of militia of the Southern Coalition crossed the wall, the overwhelming rain of arrows covered even the moonlight for a moment, and the screams of countless people were like a repetition of the previous night, and the psychological shadows of many people exploded and refused to rush forward even if they died.

And the nobles, who realized that they had reached the limit of their sleepless nights, finally let these poor peasants rest for a while.

"So many people have died, and their arrows are almost gone. A nobleman said in front of the peasants, as if the greatest function of those living human lives was to consume each other's arrows.

He should have been glad that the peasants did not understand Sivalier, but even so, that frivolous attitude was remembered by many.

In the second half of the night, close to the early hours of the morning, the peasants could finally rest again, and anyway, this was the end of the matter, and they would not attack until dawn.

They thought so, but when the dawn finally came, and the militia of the Confederate army gritted their teeth and stepped over the low wall with corpses that had begun to stink from the heat, they were greeted by an empty fortress.

The empty knights' castle in the clear July sun was unobstructed, and there was not a single shadow of the sneaky archers on the female wall.

"Ran away...... All of them fled...... "The men who opened the gate and searched for it had not been able to kill a single enemy when Ashbourne II learned that they had wasted three days on such a small but crucial knight's fort.

The commander of the front line has become the trembling knight from before.

As for where his lord went, everyone knew.

It's just that everyone tacitly kept silent.

On the morning of 20 July, for the first time, the momentum of the Confederate coalition led by Ahbourne II was slowed down, and what they did not realize was that something like this was only the beginning.

After all.

Ashbon II did not know how to fight.

The nobles of the Northern Army, Prince Edward, and Archduke Lesky.

And our Sage Monsieurs, these people.

But they are all good players.