Chapter 20
After the failure of the Albion air raid, few people had seen Charles Raymonz.
The office door of the grand duke's residence was firmly shut. Since Charles Raymonz returned in a wretched state, no one knew what had happened inside.
All that circulated among the nobles was the rumor that cries and the sound of things breaking could occasionally be heard from within.
But they could not allow the Southern army to set foot on Western soil.
Taking over full authority in Charles Raymonz's place was the notorious officer Eric Smith, who had earned the greatest credit in the war against the Western natives.
Maybe that was for the best.
There were hardly any nobles who would obey Charles Raymonz's orders after he had made the wrong call three times.
And so Eric Smith, now in full command, demanded one thing.
"Hand over full command of all the armies to me. Especially the command of the commoner units."
The nobles accepted Eric Smith's proposal at once. Corrupt and incompetent nobles had no experience with actually fighting a war.
But the centurions and chiliarchs from the lower classes, who oversaw the conscripts, reacted strongly.
It was because of Eric Smith's notorious reputation.
Every victory Eric Smith achieved always came at the cost of huge numbers of commoner conscripts.
"You want to use our commoner conscripts as shields again, don't you? We've already endured more than enough!"
Still, during the border conflicts, it had been understandable. The long-standing border raids had inflicted great harm on the commoners.
Many commoners on the western border had lost family, friends, and loved ones to the barbarians.
If it was to fight those raiders, who couldn't even speak their language, they were willing to die without complaint.
But the fight against the South was different.
"Why should we die for your war?"
A noble's war.
That was the commoners' view of this war.
Their view of the South, however, was not bad.
Over the course of a thousand years, the people of the South and West had exchanged with each other countless times. It was also common for people to go earn money in the South, where the industrial revolution was in full swing.
So there were quite a lot of people with family and friends in the South.
From the Western vested class's perspective, the South was a monster that ravaged their manufacturing industry, but the Western commoners saw it differently.
They were the ones who broke the monopolistic production system controlled by the vested nobles and supplied good goods at low prices.
That was why the people most dissatisfied when tolls were extorted at Sarsen Fortress were the Western commoners.
Because the tolls at Sarsen Fortress drove up the prices of goods from Southern factories.
With resentment already stacked up like that, there was no one who wanted to fight the Southern people directly.
Conscripts with no will to fight.
A shattered public mood.
Lower officers who had no intention of obeying orders.
In such a situation, Eric Smith, the devil of the West, offered a simple solution.
"Cut down all the officers who are resisting and fill their places with sons of noble families."
Lower officers are the backbone of the army?
From the beginning, Eric Smith had never expected anything from the commoner conscript units.
It didn't matter what officers were put in charge. The conscript units just had to keep moving forward.
In his mind, conscript infantry were nothing more than a backdrop to make the nobles' achievements shine brighter.
"Their weapons can pierce a knight's aura from long range, you say. Then put the infantry in front and charge."
To Eric Smith, the role of conscript infantry was nothing more and nothing less than that of meat shields.
"No matter how strong their weapons are, they won't be able to get through 30,000 troops and strike our main force."
While all eyes were on the conscripts, the knights made up of cavalry, wyvern units, and aura users would attack.
Any enemy magical attack that might appear would be blocked by allied mages.
In any case, once they succeeded in closing in, victory was all but decided.
"It'll be a glorious death for the lowborn. Being shields is the noblest sacrifice they can make for the West."
And so the Western army's formation became quite grotesque.
Thirty thousand infantry stood in the front line, with the rest of the main force behind them.
The infantry did not fail to realize that they were being used as meat shields.
But they couldn't resist.
Because the knights behind them were watching them with their eyes wide open.
In that state, the Western army headed for the place that would become the battlefield of a major clash.
On the rugged western coastline, there was only one place where 50,000 men could collide.
The Arcal Plain.
The only flat stretch of coast nearby.
***
The distance from the County of Sarsen to Porvin was roughly 180 kilometers.
Considering that the maximum marching speed of an average World War I infantry unit was 4 kilometers per hour, or 24 to 32 kilometers a day, that made it a journey of about a week.
But I deliberately allowed a little more time than that.
There was no force that would simply let an army march into its backyard without resistance.
A cavalry scout, returning in haste, reported.
"A large enemy force is moving toward the Arcal Plain! Estimated strength is about 40,000!"
"They really scraped together every last soldier they could."
Needless to say, repeated defeats lower support for the war.
When support for the war drops, the nobles stop sending out soldiers.
And in that situation, they managed to gather as many as 40,000 troops?
That meant they really were pushing conscription hard.
I had already heard through intelligence that public sentiment in the West was in ruins.
They must have been terribly desperate.
Trying to conscript civilians when public sentiment was already this bad.
"What about their formation?"
"Well... there were no cavalry or wyvern knights. It seems the main force is in the rear."
"Hmm?"
That was the exact opposite of Western military doctrine.
In their doctrine, wyverns devastate the battlefield, cavalry sweeps through, and infantry seals the occupation—so why would they send infantry first?
Then, suddenly, one possibility came to mind.
"Ah, don't tell me..."
They had probably seen the power of our firearms to some extent through the battle at Sarsen Harbor. Using the same attack pattern as always would only produce the same result as last time.
If they had learned that much, they would never stick to the same method of attack.
They'd be trying to find a way to charge through machine-gun fire.
And the method they had found was...
"Are they trying to use the conscripts as shields?"
If that was really the case, I could only call it insanity.
The people are the foundation of a nation. Without the people, a nation cannot grow, and adult men in particular are the main pillar of economic growth.
They wanted to use such precious human resources as mere meat shields?
With public sentiment in such a ruined state?
"They're completely insane. Well, that's better for me."
Western nobles setting their own people up as shields versus a gentlemanly Southern army.
From my perspective, since I needed to annex the West while crafting that image, it was actually a welcome move.
Besides, the other side still seemed to misunderstand our way of war.
Modern war is not a war where you can't strike just because you can't see it in front of you.
"All units, halt here for the moment. Assemble the staff!"
We stopped the march and summoned the staff.
As the staff gathered inside the temporary tent, I kept thinking.
If we clashed on the plain, would we lose?
Absolutely not.
Even just light machine guns and autocannons, with their rates of fire of hundreds of rounds per minute, could shred 40,000 men in no time.
The fate of infantry charging a machine-gun nest with swords had already been shown by the Japanese on the Pacific front.
But choosing a head-on clash here would be amateurish.
"That's not how you win a war."
Victory in battle and victory in war are clearly different things.
Winning a battle just means fighting and winning. But to win the war, we had to achieve the objective of invading the West.
And if we killed 30,000 forcibly conscripted Western soldiers, that would become an obstacle to annexing the West.
"So today, only the nobles and their private soldiers die here."
"How do you intend to separate the conscripts from their main force?"
At the staff officer's question, I pointed to the map spread out on the table.
A narrow gorge leading from Porvin into the Arcal Plain.
"As soon as all of the enemy conscript units pass through here, we'll collapse this gorge. Then the main force will be trapped inside."
"But... the Arbel Mountains are made of granite. It would be hard to destroy them with just our army's 76mm field guns."
"With just 76mm field guns, yes."
This was an operation that could not be carried out by the army alone.
But our expeditionary force was not an army made up solely of the army.
"But no matter how hard granite is, can it withstand the 305mm main guns of a dreadnought?"
"Ah...!"
We had the most powerful firepower of this era, capable of smashing even fortresses in a single blow.
A dreadnought with a range in the 10-kilometer class could easily destroy a gorge close enough to the coast.
"Deploy an artillery observation unit and one platoon to the nearby mountain."
The plan was simple.
The dreadnought, having received the coordinates from the artillery observation platoon, would collapse the gorge's entrance.
And then we would sweep away the enemies trapped in the gorge with 305mm naval guns.
Aura is certainly an incredible power.
It's true that it can let a human withstand 20mm autocannon fire and block a few rounds from anti-aircraft guns.
But could it withstand a 305mm naval-gun bombardment?
"We'll send only the 1st Division to the Arcal Plain. The conscripts probably didn't really come here because they wanted to fight, so start by offering them surrender."
The remaining division had one job.
To annihilate the enemy fleeing out of the gorge after it had been turned to rubble by naval gunfire.
"The 2nd Division, including the guard unit, will all follow me. We'll go around the Arcal Plain and block the rear of the gorge."
The enemy force was also closing in at every moment, so there wasn't much time.
I looked back at the staff and said,
"All right, let's move out. It's time to show those Western nobles the power of naval guns."