Chapter 6: Building the Army in Lakewood

Chapter 6 Building an Army in Lakewood

Paul Greiman spent almost a week on familiarizing and adapting to the daily routine and life of a lord, during which time the body’s original memories gradually finished recovering.

The territory he was in belonged to the Kingdom of Aldo, the westernmost country of the continent in the known world, with numerous human countries spread out to the east of the kingdom, among which the Gabela Empire was the most powerful.

In the north and east of the kingdom, there were mountains that stretched for thousands of miles, on which lived many dwarf clans, and to the north of the Rocky Mountains was the vast prairie, where countless tribes of orcs were distributed, and to the north was the endless ice field that was rarely visited by human beings.

The south of the known world is also dotted with discontinuous swaths of rainforests inhabited by elves known for their beauty and grace.

What worried him a bit was the existence of a huge religious organization, the Church, in this world, which had had different official titles in different periods of history, and which people later referred to directly as the Church.

Its beliefs spread almost all over the human nations, and there were even believers distributed among the foreigners, and the priest on the night he woke up was a clergyman of this religion.

With his current memory, he did not know much about the past history of this religion, and did not know if there had been any black history. But what is certain is that there are not many fanatical believers among the humans, and he has seen several of them with his not-so-rich experience.

The land under the direct control of the Church is not much, not much bigger than a duchy, but its influence can be called the wind and the rain.

“Isn’t this a setting that’s already been used to death? Which crossover world has its shadow.” Already powerless to spit it out.

In addition, it seems that magic exists in this world, although most people, including nobles, have never been able to meet a single person who can use magic in their entire lives, and many people regard magic as nonsense.

But his own butler, Philip, swore with conviction that he had his life saved from bandits by a mage when he was a child. According to Philip’s story, the mage gestured with his left hand and mouthed the words, then a large fireball shot out from the staff on his right hand and glued itself to the face of the robber across the street with lightning speed.

Well, since there were all these fantastical races like dwarves, elves and orcs, the existence of magic wasn’t something impossible. However, he was more inclined to think that what the butler saw was something like a magic trick.

On the first weekend after he woke up, the long-awaited parade finally began.

As he had requested, the soldiers formed three squares and passed through the small square in order under the command of the knights.

“This …… is my soldiers?” The young earl grimaced ironically.

The soldiers in the “squares” were dressed in a variety of costumes, the only thing that was the same on their bodies was a cloth armor tattooed with the emblem of the Greiman family.

At the beginning, the formation was quite neat, but after they started marching, they didn’t go far before their pace got messy, and when they reached him, the formation had become so messy and loose that they couldn’t even see that it was a square formation anymore.

“Gentlemen, it is necessary to raise the bar a little on the quality of our army!” After gathering the knights, Paul grimaced and a sentence popped out of his mouth.

“Uh……” the knights looked at each other, in the end it was Bryce who stood out, “Lord Count, it’s like this, our place is relatively remote, there is no coveting from other lords, coupled with the simplicity of the people’s customs, so usually in terms of armament is grasped rather loosely. To be honest, I didn’t expect the pirates to hit a place so far away from the coast this time.”

“Bloody lesson ah! Comrades …… ah no, I mean gentlemen.” Only the young lord looked up to the sky and sighed with a pained look, “The last defeat is a bloody lesson!”

The knights were mortified, the death of the old earl always had a shadow over their hearts;
Paul capitalized on the situation, “That’s why I’ve decided that I will personally supervise the training of the recruits this time!” “Yes! Lord Earl!” Although they were highly skeptical of the young earl’s knowledge in military matters, the humiliating performance of the parade team made the knights unable to muster the courage to raise their objections.

After another week like this, the new round of conscription totaled an additional 315 recruits, and he decided to model his army after the pre-crossing Earth’s army, so he announced his plan of integration to the knights.

The army was set up as a regiment, battalion, company, platoon, and squad of five levels of establishment, the most basic squad in the general state of 10 people, with a head and deputy squad leader, in accordance with the principle of the three-three system, a platoon under the jurisdiction of three squads, with platoon headquarters and head and deputy platoon leaders, a company under the jurisdiction of three platoons and a cooking class, with company headquarters and head and deputy company leaders, a battalion under the jurisdiction of three companies, with battalion headquarters and head and deputy battalion commanders, a regiment under the jurisdiction of three battalions, with regimental headquarters and head and deputy regimental commanders.

Corresponding to the establishment, he also cottage the rank system of the previous generation, according to the current establishment, set up two levels of soldiers (private, private), non-commissioned officers three levels (corporal, sergeant, staff sergeant), three levels of lieutenants (second lieutenant, lieutenant, captain), three levels of school officers (major, lieutenant-colonel, colonel), and at the same time stipulated that all levels of rank corresponds to the position.

He also stipulated the order of transfer of command in special cases – for example, when a commander is unable to command a unit due to injury or death – prioritizing the transfer of command according to rank, followed by rank, and lastly, according to length of service.

Taking a company as an example, in the event of a casualty on the battlefield in which the company commander is unable to command the battle, the deputy company commander takes over the command; if the deputy company commander is also involved in an accident, the platoon commanders take over the command of the entire company in order of rank; if the platoon commanders are all of the same rank, the order is according to the length of their military service, and so on with the other establishment units.

Ranks will make the troops more organized, so that there will not be the situation in the old army where the troops would disperse once the commander hangs up; under the rank system, in the event of such an accident, a new commander will automatically arise in order and continue to lead the troops in combat, ensuring the sustainability of the fighting force.

The knights were a bit confused by these complicated designations, some suggested that it would be sufficient to set the ranks directly at four levels: private, sergeant, lieutenant, and colonel, and that there should be no further subdivision within each level, on the grounds that the territory’s army now only consisted of a measly few hundred men, but this was dismissed by the young earl.

He explained, “Although the size of our army is still very small, we need to put up the shelves first no matter what, so that when we encounter more serious emergencies in the future, it will be convenient to expand.”

“What a bunch of ratty fellows,” Paul said darkly, “I haven’t even moved the names of divisions, armies, groups, generals, and marshals yet!”

The reason why he didn’t propose a larger establishment and a higher rank now, on one hand it was true that the current force was too small, on the other hand he didn’t really dare to, according to the current largest regiment establishment, if it was fully staffed it would have to be more than a thousand men, for a remote area of the earldom, this was quite a sizable military force.

If he proposes a divisional establishment of tens of thousands of people and an even larger military establishment, if the rumor is spread by someone who has a heart, it may be a big hat of intent to conspire to rebel, knowing that the king’s capital of a knight’s order is only more than 10,000 people.

And those battle-hardened, for the country to fight the nobleman is qualified to be called general, a group of men but a thousand or eight hundred people, usually fight mountain bandits, fight pirates of the countryside knights will be crowned with the name of the major generals, admiral, it’s too much to say.

There were also objections to the allocation of a cooking class to each company, which was considered unnecessary.

“This will be a guarantee of our fighting strength!” Speaking of the cooking class, the lord suddenly became exuberant, and stood up to explain its great significance with his hands in the air, all of which made the knights puzzled, but seeing that the lord attached such importance to it, no one objected to it.

Finally, Paul proposed to regularize the army, for the loss of labor in the soldiers’ homes, he will pay a certain allowance as compensation.

The knights didn’t have an opinion on this point, anyway, what they spent was all the money of the lord’s house. On the contrary, Philip’s steward who stood by the side almost fainted, this time the recruitment of soldiers has already spent a large sum of money, the young master wants to increase the expenses, and it is also long-term, it looks like we have to find a time to persuade him.

After the meeting was adjourned, the thing that made Butler Philip even more distressed came, the young master even asked him to be responsible for customizing two sets of clothes for each of those big-headed soldiers, and to do it within a month. Although he tried his best to oppose the young master’s “waste” of money, but the young master repeatedly emphasized the importance of uniforms for a regular army, so he had to go and do it.

(End of chapter)