Banner of the Evil God

Compared with Sui Xiong, who has great ambitions, Creek's ideas are much simpler and more practical.

At present, in addition to new agriculture, the work he focuses on is training soldiers.

The last time the volunteer army was ordered to support the Eagle Kingdom, the Baron of Keen suffered heavy losses. Less than one-tenth of the more than one hundred people returned, and even the knight Divol Os died on the battlefield. This has seriously damaged the vitality of the Baron of Keen. It can be said that the elite of the territory's army has been almost destroyed.

This account is not difficult to calculate. Generally speaking, a baron should have three knights, and each knight should have roughly three cavalrymen, about ten professional soldiers (sometimes hunters are also counted), and about twenty militiamen. The baron himself should have six cavalrymen, about twenty professional soldiers, and about fifty militiamen. In general, a baron can dispatch fifteen or sixteen cavalrymen, about fifty professional soldiers, and more than a hundred militiamen.

The Baron of Keen is almost a standard baron. Losing more than a hundred people at a time is really a serious injury. If Creek didn't have some money, a few masters in the territory, and the support of the Void Mask Church, the town would be broken into by bandits and looted.

But relying on masters alone is far from enough. Maintaining order, chasing bandits, patrolling, collecting taxes, checkpoints... all these require manpower. No matter how powerful the masters are, they can't be divided into several people.

So Creek must recruit more soldiers to fill the gap in the territory's soldiers.

After careful consideration, he decided to imitate the practices in some historical time-travel novels and try to train the army in a different way.

First, he gave up the idea of ​​recruiting adventurers as professional soldiers. The strength of the adventurers is naturally beyond doubt, but both loyalty and discipline are problematic. Professional soldiers themselves do not need too strong strength, they need training and discipline.

Then, he also gave up the idea of ​​training militia. The reason why militia is called militia is that, to put it bluntly, they are ordinary people who have received a little military training. Even if such soldiers have weapons, their combat effectiveness and fighting will are also questionable. When they have the upper hand, they may not be able to catch up with the fleeing enemy. When they are in a confrontation, they can't stand the situation. When they are at a disadvantage, they are thankful that they don't run away. Instead of wasting manpower and material resources to train militia, it is better to save these resources and train more professional soldiers.

As for cavalry, there is really no way. Even among adventurers, there are very few who can fight on horseback. Most adventurers who "can ride horses" have the level of riding skills that can only be used to travel on horseback. They still have to dismount when fighting. It is difficult to recruit heroes who can fight on horseback, or even charge and shoot on horseback, let alone train them.

In fact, there are less than ten people with this ability in the entire Keen Barony, and we have to count the Knight Divol Os who has already died.

Since it has been decided, Creek issued a recruitment notice to recruit soldiers from the entire territory.

However, the requirements for recruiting soldiers this time are different from the past. They do not require "strong body", "fierce", and "dare to kill", but require "honesty", "discipline", and "obeying orders".

This request surprised everyone, and Knight James couldn't help but ask about it.

"Sir, it's fine if you don't recruit adventurers as soldiers, and it's fine if you don't train militia, but why are your requirements for recruiting soldiers different from others!" The loyal Knight Howard James advised, "You are recruiting full-time professional soldiers. Of course, you should require each of them to be tall and strong, and dare to fight and kill. What's the use of those who are honest and only obey orders?"

Crick smiled and said, "I know that soldiers should recruit strong men who can fight and dare to fight, but there are very few such people in our territory. If we recruit them again, if something happens, there will be no militia. On the contrary, keep them in the civilians, and when there are more people in the future, you can train them to be militia captains, and maybe they can help at any time."

Knight James was stunned. He felt that this statement seemed to make sense, but it seemed wrong, but after thinking about it, he couldn't figure out what the problem was, so he could only leave with a frown. As he walked, he was still talking to himself, mumbling and thinking.

Creek smiled slightly. It was not a challenging thing to fool a person with an IQ of only nine.

For the Baron of Keane, which had just lost more than a hundred strong men, it was not easy to recruit strong men who dared to fight and kill, but it was not difficult to recruit ordinary people who were honest and obedient. In just five or six days, Creek recruited all the thirty people he had planned.

According to his plan, after the thirty people were trained, ten of them would be sent to their own villages, and the remaining twenty would stay in the town. As for the two knights, Charles Os and Howard James, they were both capable of maintaining their own territories, and Creek, the lord, did not need to worry too much.

After recruiting thirty people, they naturally had to be trained.

According to past traditions, the training program for professional soldiers generally consists of three parts: using weapons, wearing armor, and simulating actual combat.

In terms of weapons, professional soldiers are divided into three categories: sword and shield, spear and bow and arrow. Those who use swords and shields are those who are thick but not tall. They are the pillars of the army and are responsible for resisting the enemy's attacks; those who use bows and arrows are professionals. There are not many of them, and their lethality is not great, but they can effectively hit the enemy's morale; as for those who don't have any special skills, just learn to use spears, which is the easiest.

In terms of armor, sword and shield soldiers must wear heavy armor, generally inlaid armor, or even composite armor of chains and animal skins; spearmen can wear thick leather armor; as for archers, if conditions permit, they can wear chain mail, otherwise they can wear light leather armor.

This does not mean that archers pursue agility, so they have to wear light armor, but archers shrink in the back and generally do not need heavy armor.

Although... in fact, archers often have the highest military strength. Most excellent archers are also strong in hand-to-hand combat, but who would let them go to the battlefield to fight with others! That's too wasteful!

When even the archers have to draw their swords to fight, the lord's own life is almost in danger. At this point, who can care about others!

But Creek's approach is completely different from others. Among the thirty people he recruited, there is not even a single archer or sword and shield soldier, all of them are spearmen. And the armor he prepared for the spearmen is also different. It is not the ordinary leather armor, but all chain mail.

Although those chain mails are relatively crudely made, they are still chain mails no matter how poor the quality is!

A piece of chain mail, even if it is crudely made, often costs more than 100 gold coins. This batch of chain mail for 30 people cost almost 3,500 gold coins at once. If the territory itself did not have some inventory, and the Eagle Kingdom returned a lot of relics after the war, just buying these armors would make Creek, who is not well-funded at present, feel a little distressed.

But we have to admit that thirty soldiers wearing chain mail, holding spears and standing in several rows, are indeed majestic and magnificent, and the momentum alone is amazing.

The training program that Crick gave them was also very strange. It was not the usual straw men that were stabbed at targets, but started with lining up and marching in unison.

"Are these things useful?" Knight Howard James asked privately.

Crick himself was not very sure, but he felt that since he had recruited people and spent money, he should finish this experiment anyway.

Under his orders, these soldiers who were farmers or small helpers not long ago would stand in line and march in unison after eating and drinking every day, plus physical training such as long-distance running. In general, they did not look like a group of soldiers, but more like a group of actors.

Not only that, Creek would visit the barracks every few days, give them political lessons, and tell them that "you are fighting in the army not to make money to support yourself, but to protect your current stable life", and tell them that "for soldiers, death is terrible, but failure and escape are more terrible", and let them recall the bitterness and sweetness, compare the hard life in the past with the stable life now... In short, think of various ways to inspire their fighting spirit.

But to be honest, the effect is very general.

Admittedly, the intelligence of these soldiers is generally not high, the highest one is only nine, but there are several with an intelligence of seven. But they are definitely not stupid, and they are not like the dead soldiers in some old-fashioned Long Aotian-style novels. The protagonist's tiger body shakes and exudes a kingly aura, and they all bow down and their loyalty is immediately locked at 100.

They come to the army, in the final analysis, to make money and live a better life.

And for them, nothing is more terrible than death. In fact, they are not mentally prepared to kill or be killed, and they have not yet completed the transformation from ordinary people to soldiers.

Why do we usually emphasize the courage to fight and kill when recruiting professional soldiers? This is the key.

Creek was not in a hurry. He still trained them to stand in formation, march in step, and physical fitness every day. He still patrolled regularly and gave them lectures and talked with them.

About a month later, the formations of these soldiers were finally neat and the marching in step was also in shape, so the training entered the next stage, stabbing with the spear.

The spear technique is actually a very large system. Generally speaking, there are four parts: smashing, stabbing, sweeping, and pushing. Smashing refers to using the spear to smash from top to bottom, which is particularly useful when fighting with the opponent's spearmen; stabbing is stabbing, which is the main means of attack; sweeping is to sweep left and right with the spear, which is very useful when driving away monsters such as goblins and sweeping mobs; pushing is to fix the spear on the ground to form a forest of spears that is difficult to reserve. This is naturally used to deal with cavalry, although it is almost impossible to use it in reality.

It takes more than half a year for a skilled soldier to learn the four main moves of the spear. But Creek simply ignored the other three moves and only kept the collective stabbing.

In this way, the training speed was naturally greatly accelerated, but the soldiers' combat effectiveness was also greatly reduced.

Knight Howard James became worried again and persuaded privately, suggesting that other moves should be trained well.

"There is no time." Creek said, "First, learn the set of formation-march-stabbing, then train physical fitness, and then put on armor, and they can fight."

"That won't work..."

"Anyway, for the time being, they are just asked to exterminate goblins and the like." Creek said with a smile, "Other moves are not needed for the time being."

The knight with intelligence level 9 was convinced once again, although he still felt something was wrong.