Chapter 259: Countermeasures
Chapter 259 Countermeasures
Duke Kent held the report in his hands, and in his heart, he had an urge to tear it apart.
Who was it that allowed Gleeman to make so much money?
He looked up and saw the porcelain vase placed on the table, and as he took it over, he was about to slam it on the floor.
But the Duke’s hand hung in mid-air for a long time, unable to throw it down, and finally set the vase back up with a twisted face.
Maltz called the head of intelligence in again, ordered him to go to the hall and call a few of his inner circle, and told the others to disperse first.
After a while, the inner circle arrived, Emerson Wilder was among them, as for the duke’s son, he did not come, recently there were a lot of things that required his personal presence, reorganizing the army and enlisting new recruits, so he had been running around outside.
The Duke told his minders of the present predicament.
“We must find a weapon that can restrain the fire crossbows and thunder hammers, and then we can crush them with our strength in numbers.”
But how easy would that be? The existing bows and arrows and crossbows were inferior to the previous two in terms of range and power, and the people pondered hard, never coming up with a good plan.
“Uncle Kent, I do have an idea, I don’t know if it’s feasible.”
Emerson suddenly spoke, Maltz was like seeing a bright light in the darkness immediately said, “Oh? Tell me!”
“Have you heard of the longbow?”
“A longbow? We have them here too!”
“The longbow I’m talking about is not an ordinary longbow, but the longer, bigger kind.”
Emerson gestured with both hands and introduced it to the people in the den.
“This kind of longbow is about 1.5~2 meters long, made of purple shirt wood, or you can use elm and oak instead, but it’s best to use purple shirt wood because it’s strong, unbreakable, tough, and flexible, and it can be drawn more open.”
“It is able to reach a range of about 200~300 meters, which is already comparable to the Ardar’s fire crossbow. And it is very powerful, it can penetrate leather, padded armor and fabric at a distance of about 220-260 meters, or penetrate the lock armor, plate armor or fish scale armor can resist its penetration; but if it is shot head-on in less than 100 meters even the plate armor can’t resist it; to the range of 50 meters, the longbow arrows can be said to be practically invulnerable. ”
Emerson’s description made the crowd’s eyes light up, this kind of weapon was too terrifying.
“Really? Emerson, is the ‘longbow’ you’re talking about really that powerful?”
Emerson pondered slightly, “Uh …… I also heard it from someone else, and there might be an element of bragging, but there’s always no mistaking that the longbow is powerful.”
Maltz Kent hammered out, “Try it anyway, do you have a way to make this kind of bow and arrow? Or purchasing it would be fine.”
“I don’t know how to make it, but I know where to buy it. However, Uncle Kent, just buying it won’t work, training soldiers who operate longbows is not an easy task, you have to go through years and years of long term training to become a qualified longbowman.”
“What is the solution regarding this?”
“Mercenaries.”
“Mercenaries?”
“Yes, Uncle Kent, pay to hire longbowmen, preferably from one of those large mercenary groups.”
Maltz Kent narrowed his eyes, he knew of the existence of mercenaries, in some regions where wars were frequent, there were a large number of these people who sold their lives for money active, they either worked alone or formed groups, some of the large mercenary groups would grow to a very astonishing size, and their fighting strength could even match the army of a powerful lord.
However, most mercenaries are extremely morally corrupt and have no sense of honor, and a cameo as a bandit or robber is a common occurrence. Although the local soldiers recruited in the territory also robbed, but also more or less scrupulous about the feelings of fellow countrymen, as a complete outsider mercenaries do not have such constraints.
Of course, this latter characteristic was not in the least within Maltz Kent’s consideration, the only thing that made him a bit worried was the price of the mercenary money, the price that could make others sell their lives would certainly not be low.
But if one could defeat the alliance of lords opposing him and annex their territories and wealth, especially that Paul Gleiman’s, what was paid would eventually be taken back exponentially.
The Duke slapped the table and shouted, “Great, little Emerson, this is exactly what I need, weapons and soldiers all at once.”
Emerson puffed out his chest, “If Uncle Kent is interested, I am willing to travel to contact the various mercenary groups.”
Maltz agreed, “Good, I’ll leave this matter to you, the price is negotiable, the main thing is to be able to gather a sufficient number of troops.”
Emerson reminded him, “However, this will take time, before the mercenary corps arrive, we still need to think of a way to trip up Graiman’s legs, although his army has stopped now, there is no guarantee that they will resume their attack.” The Duke grimaced, “Yes, that is indeed a pressing problem.”
The intelligence chief who was silent on the side suddenly said, “Lord Duke, please leave this matter to us.”
“What is your good idea?”
The intelligence supervisor smiled slightly, “Earl Gleiman has been messing around with making his territory look good this year, but he doesn’t know that he already has two volcanoes buried under his ass, and although the volcanoes are still relatively small, sooner or later there will be an eruption.”
The Duke authorized him to continue.
“It was mentioned in the report that Alda has come up with a new method of salt production that can produce salt quickly and in large quantities. On the surface, this is a thing too good to be true, but ……”
“But what?”
“There are a large number of salt people along the coast who rely on boiling salt to make a living, they rely on the traditional boiling salt method to obtain salt, they can’t compete with the new style of salt production method in terms of cost, salt merchants don’t buy from them, causing the salt people to almost be on the verge of losing their livelihoods, as long as we ……”
Before the intelligence chief could finish, someone in the room called out, “I know what you’re going to say? This is a bad idea! Lord Duke, this method must not be used.”
The person who grabbed the words was a bannerman of the Kent family, who said righteously, “Although we are in a war with Gleiman, we are after all the same nobles, and to go and incite the untouchables to go against their own lord, what is the decency of that?”
The other heartthrobs of noble origin also yelled:
“Yes, it’s simply ridiculous!”
“Treasonous!”
The intelligence chief stopped talking, without a knighthood he couldn’t understand what was going on in the lords’ heads, it was clearly on fire.
Duke Kent waved his hand in annoyance, “Alright, this matter will be discussed later. Do you guys have any other ideas?”
One after another, people mentioned a few ideas, but none of them were feasible in Maltz’s mind.
“Emerson go contact the mercenary group that is good at using longbows, let’s retrain an army and try to hold off the Arda people until the mercenaries arrive.”
The Duke finally announced so.
The crowd dispersed, only the head of intelligence was left behind.
“Earlier you said that Greiman had two volcanoes under his ass, what’s the other one?”
The intelligence chief’s eyes lit up and he whispered, “Countryside.”
“What’s he up to in the countryside again?”
“After repelling the pirates, Count Gleiman introduced a decree – ‘Land Consolidation’ – to consolidate and centralize the scattered arable lands of various landowners and homesteaders through replacement, aiming to make better use of the land. ”
“That decree sounds good.”
“Yes, the decree is good. But there are many people in the countryside who conceal their cultivated area in order to evade taxes, and there are also many people who encroach on large amounts of public land due to lax management. Uh…… you also know that this kind of phenomenon is always repeated.”
Maltz let out a bitter smile and gestured for the supervisor to continue.
“And in the process of replacement and consolidation of arable land, the first thing to do is to inventory each family’s property and measure the actual area of arable land ……”
“And then there’s the fact that the quality of the arable land varies from good to bad, and no matter how hard the replacement process tries to maintain fairness, there will be people who feel like they’re losing out.”
“So we can make a big deal here.”
After the intelligence chief finished speaking, Maltz Kent pondered for a long time without saying a word, and finally simply said, “You may step down for now.”
After the supervisor left, the Duke’s study fell into silence.
(End of chapter)