Chapter 93 (1/2)

Chapter 93 Army Framework

A few days after the victory celebration, Roland finally undertook the great farming project.

A constant dripping sound could be heard from the direction of the windows when he was sitting in his office, it sounded as if it was raining non-stop. It was the sound of the melting snow.

When he visited the countryside for New Year’s, he laid in front of the window most of the time, watching the long ice prisms which hung under the roof turn transparent and then into droplets, which then fell down. At the moment he hadn’t had the time for such leisure. However, writing down plans for the future while simultaneously listening to the voice of earth’s recovery was also very pleasurable.

According to the information gathered from the previous years, the snow would need about one week’s time to melt, but the road between the Border Town and Longsong Stronghold would at least need one month until it was usable again. It took so much time after the snow melted since the road was built out of mud and also didn’t have a drainage system

Roland could already imagine it, if he wanted to defeat Longsong Stronghold, the first thing he needed to do, was to build a road between the two cities which was usable by carriages even during heavy rains.

But now the problem with the highest priority was still the issue of the army’s reconstruction. Without a reliable and mighty army, it would be impossible to defeat the forces of the Longsong Stronghold with his outnumbered troops. Transferring the militia into the regular army was only the first step. The specific preparation of establishing the new rules, discipline, reward and punishment system turned out to be a big headache.

Although as a child he had played land battle chess, however, he had already long forgotten all the previous teachings. Roland, after some thought, simply decided to make up his own plans. Anyway, as the creator of the new army, even if he implemented unreasonable things, no one would discover it anyway.

So Border Towns’ first compilation for the new army was soon prepared: according to the Army, division, platoon, team, squad, five people for a squad (taking into account that a cannon needed at least five people to operate), ten squads for a team, ten teams for a platoon. As for the number of platoons within a division, he decided to consider it later. In view of the overall battle prowess of the armies during this era, as long as he sent out two or three platoons of soldiers, it should be enough to defeat the vast majority of opponents on the battlefield.

When he decided on the basics for the army framework, Roland took a deep breath.

The rules and regulations that came next were much simpler, in addition to always wearing their uniform, they had to obey the commanding officer, never desert, never betray a comrade and so on. Roland’s first rule was to prohibit plundering and harassing.

The problems caused by plundering were numerous, and the negative impact it had on the local inhabitants was so great, that they would need years to recover, if ever. This was also the reason why he had insisted on only using civilians as the members of the military.

When the aristocracy responded to the call for battle of their Lords, the main reason for their obeying wasn’t to defeat the enemy, instead, it was for the looting afterwards. Or in other words, the main reason they followed the call of war, was to plunder the wealth and territory of an enemy, of course, this included also the innocent civilians within that territory.

As for the mercenaries, not to mention bandits, even though they looked steady and fierce, but if you took a closer look, they were just a flag waving in the wind and at the same time robbery was also a major source of their income. So hoping for military discipline from these people was meaningless.

Only an army built up out of civilians wouldn’t see other civilians as only lambs to be slaughtered. Of course, relying on discipline and moral restraint alone wasn’t enough. After long days in the field, the heart of greed would enlarge with each continued victory. Therefore, the given rewards had to always keep up with the greed, only in this way could he prevent looting and other illegal behavior.

In order to make the reward grand enough, Roland decided to offer the greatest reward of all – receiving their own territory. As long as they achieved great merits during battle, they could get their own territory. Roland had many unclaimed territories, like this, the land between Border Town and Longsong Stronghold could slowly be reclaimed.