232 – Before the Fall of the Elain Empire (3)
The day after checking the report posted by the intelligence unit, I called my father and the counts together and held a meeting.
So, of course, I tried to be on time when I told the counts and my father to gather, but…
I was late checking the documents because there was too much meaningful information from the intelligence unit today.
So I went inside with an apologetic expression, and my father and the counts had received information from the watch commander that I would be very late.
I was talking about myself over a meal of meat and bread in the command barracks.
“As His Highness Paulo knows, His Highness the King is a very sincere and kind person… From the time he was a baron until now, he has never accompanied me when I asked him to go out for a night out.”
“Isn’t that better than being distracted by nightlife?”
“hahahaha… My Baltic wife is so jealous that she won’t even let me go out for a night out. So, if you go with His Highness, ‘Your Highness asked us to go, so we had no choice…’ ‘ Is an excuse. I’m doing it because I can’t. He has no flaws other than this one.”
After I said that, even my father intervened in my gossip, as if he didn’t know I was coming.
“To be honest, before Ciel brought Ella, she was a little worried about him. If you usually take a pretty maid with you, don’t the aristocratic youngsters touch their hands without being able to overcome their curiosity when they were boys? Even so, I often prayed to Deus when I saw that he was still like a wooden stone. It’s good that my son is competent, but I’m worried about the heir… Please save me.”
“So, when this war is over and we return to Nantes, at least Paulo, please hang out with us.”
“Yeah, instead, I should benefit from Count Balt. You will buy it.”
Even if the Baltic guy is like that, why does his father, who is over 60, talk so much…
And the fact that Ella was so active in the plains of Ethlon… In fact, isn’t it because her father and her mother grabbed Ella and encouraged her to commit it…
Also, no matter how flawed the monarch’s revealing a woman is, what if I madly revealing a woman, giving birth to a bunch of children from her, and becoming 20 children the size of a son?
Since he was the first king, he must have died of cancer while running and running around to give titles to his 20 sons one by one.
So, please, father, please don’t increase the children of other concubines other than Ron… Since he’s my younger brother, I have to separate him from the title and land.
I coughed in the back to interrupt the conversation, which was difficult to refute, even with my father involved.
At the sound of a cough, my father and the other counts turned around and looked shocked.
“…. Majesty? I did not mean to slander Your Highness. It was just a small servant’s wish to go on a night out with Your Highness.”
“Yes. Yes, it’s just a little disappointing. It is a passing story not worth bearing in mind.”
“Yes, Ciel… Isn’t it all an old story?”
It would be a big problem in countries with Confucian culture such as Joseon or in modern Korea for talking behind such back, but here, it is not a big problem unless you openly say that you are a eunuch or a sodomy.
So I’m late for the meeting anyway, so I’ll have to hand it over.
So I said with a smile.
“Isn’t this all an old story? And when this war is over, there will be no war for the next 10 years, so let’s wrap it up neatly and go back to play. Then, let’s start the strategy meeting.”
At the same time as he said that, the orderlies standing nearby removed the leftover bowls and glasses and left.
As I watched the process of being organized, I laid out a large map of the direct jurisdiction of the Elaine family.
30 Fortresses, 50 simple fortresses centered on the ecliptic Elysium, etc… As befits the direct control of the imperial family, the boundaries are systematic and very strict.
“First of all, as everyone knows, thanks to so many people cooperating with us among the Elaine Empire, the number of troops, commanders with more than 100 commanders, and future strategies are being delivered almost every day. And according to what I was told, Emperor Adolf is hiding in the castle, waiting for reinforcements from Brittany to arrive in two months.”
Of course, the Emperor’s soldiers remaining in the castle and the reinforcements from Brittany have to be added together… We win by just the number of pages.
So you don’t have to worry too much.
If those who have lost their morale and lost their fighting ability due to being locked in the castle regain their will to fight again at the news of Britannia reinforcements, the damage suffered by allies in battle will increase in many ways.
“If we start marching from now on, we will arrive at Elysium in a month. In other words, if we arrive at Elysium and do not win within a month, we will have to wage an all-out war with the enemy once again. Therefore, our allies must capture Elysium and capture the Emperor before Britannia reinforcements arrive.”
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“I understand. If so, how will Your Highness drop the castle? Are you going to do it like when you captured the castle of the Duchy of Orléans?”
Besieging the castle and holding a banquet of wine and meat next to it to lower the opponent’s morale is definitely a good way…
“That strategy will be unavailable now. This is because His Majesty the Emperor would scrap the food under his direct jurisdiction down to the bottom, move it into the castle, and store it as food for the soldiers inside the castle. What kind of banquet is it when you can’t buy food locally?”
To cook, you need ingredients, but the Emperor must have scraped it off without leaving a grain of wheat or a single cabbage.
I said with a sigh as if expressing regret for the emperor’s stupid brain.
“Rather, considering the future reign, we have to buy food from the newly occupied territory and spread it to the emperor’s direct jurisdiction. Otherwise, even if it wasn’t a famine, the territories under the direct control of the Elaine family would starve to death. So this time, we will launch a real siege and capture the castle within a month.”
I said that, but the damage to allies is likely to be extremely insignificant compared to attacking a huge castle.
Since many of the nobles with titles who will be guarding the walls right now are in contact with us.
If we place insider renegades with titles like Count Jacques along the way we raid the castle, they’ll open the gate like an automatic door with a signal.
“So the important thing for our allies is not to capture the imperial capital of Elysium. How can our allies block reinforcements from the United Kingdom bastards who bake and bake herring in pies, and keep the serfs under Emperor Elaine from starving to death? Otherwise, all the territories to be gifted will become a wormwood field.”
When I said that, they all started laughing as if they understood it as a gag.
“Those who make jellies with herrings are more terrifying than the emperor who looks like an orphan from an orphanage abandoned by his counts and nobles.”
“Yes. And wouldn’t that idiot emperor not want a territory made of wasteland?”
“Rather than the money spent on rebuilding the territory, transporting and distributing the stockpiled food of the Croytel Kingdom during the war is much cheaper as it increases the self-sufficiency of the people of the territory under direct control of the Emperor’s territory.”
Even if it’s a gag, if you think about the cost of transporting food and rebuilding the territory… How long have you been suffering from me…
“And as a countermeasure against this, grains around here have already been milled and processed into biscuits, and meat, seaweed, and salted herring are being transported in large quantities from the kingdom. In doing so, our forces will supply enough food for approximately 500,000 civilians for a year.”
We mobilized the maximum capacity of our kingdom, but even with this amount of food, there would be many poor people in the Emperor Elaine’s direct jurisdiction.
Because there are more than 2 million territories living in the Emperor’s direct jurisdiction alone, so 500,000 people are no more than peeing on their feet.
“At the point where we are already attacking Elysium, the Elain Empire can’t care about the 3 vassals in the west. Therefore, we will ask the French army fighting the three vassals in the west to stop fighting them for a while and concentrate on preventing the Brittany reinforcements from landing, and we will also split up 50,000 troops to guard the borders of Lens.”
If Franchi dispatches about 30,000 troops, the total of 80,000 troops including the 50,000 troops sent from our side.
If we were to lose, even the Countess of Lens, which Brittanya had obtained, would be taken away.
In the end, they will just watch the Eline Empire perish from across the river as if in disbelief.
“If you do that, the emperor will despair at the fact that the reinforcements from Bratanya he expected will not come, and the castle will open faster.”
After a while, my father looked at me and asked with a serious expression.
“Last time you became independent and established a kingdom and became the king. Then, do you intend to go beyond the king and become the emperor of the empire?”
The treatment and welfare of the people and subjects living in our kingdom will not change even if it becomes an empire.
Again, if only the power is counted, aren’t kings and emperors the same monarch, only with a different feel?
So I didn’t have much interest.
“If the people and nobles of the kingdom wish, they wear the emperor’s crown. And now I can’t afford to worry and get entangled in such trifles.”
It is funny to say that the emperor’s throne is ridiculous, but it is the crown of an empire that will collapse anyway.
So it can only seem like nothing.