Iron Harvest: When Farming Becomes Conquest
Chapter 179 - 16: Military Meeting

Chapter 179: Chapter 16: Military Meeting

The five messengers had received Roman’s response and were fiercely furious, kicked out of Sige Town without mercy.

Roman then made a harsh statement and immediately gathered his Conquest Knights.

They sat in the hall for a military council.

"Fight! We should fight!"

Green rubbing his hands together, had not had enough of the recent battle in Kant Territory and now was somewhat excited.

"Dick?" Roman looked towards the senior knight.

Dick nodded slightly, indicating his support.

Roman was momentarily speechless; there was no understanding between them at all.

"What I meant to ask was about the specific situation of the enemy."

This senior knight had participated in more wars than all of them combined and knew much about real warfare.

After a moment of contemplation, Dick said, "The Bexites family is too far from here to send many people, so the main force will be the other four families."

Roman leant his chin on his hand.

"Write it down with a pencil."

"Write what?"

Roman explained, "When they’ll arrive, the composition of their troops, the quality of their soldiers, how they will launch an attack on us once they arrive; think from the enemy’s perspective."

At that moment, Jet spoke up, "They’ll likely join forces with Earl Kant."

Aaron nodded, "Exactly."

Good.

It was originally one against five.

Now it had turned into one against six.

Earl Kant had just suffered a defeat and couldn’t just stand by, he would definitely join to get a share of the action.

"They would come from upstream."

"But they have no boats, they can’t cross."

"That’s true."

"We naturally hold an impregnable position."

The crowd erupted into discussion; Kao also mentioned the need to prevent them from crossing downstream, but Jet shook his head.

Even if they sent a smaller army, it would still likely consist of five to six thousand men, needing at least hundreds of boats, and they would have to be the type of long ships used by pirates, otherwise, it would be difficult to row upstream.

Roman yawned as he looked at Dick, who had written a lot and finally finished.

Roman looked at the draft paper.

"Do you think they could have a total of seven or eight thousand men?"

"Yes, I estimated high."

"And they won’t be able to break through?"

"Correct."

Dick continued nodding.

Roman fell into contemplation; Sige Town’s defenses were superb, although they also hindered rapid development, the surrounding mountains naturally blocked any enemies.

His thoughts wandered... piercing through wild ridges, setting up hundred-meter bridges, connecting the land.

But such an engineering feat was of canal-level magnanimity, requiring tens of thousands of laborers, with the only advantage being at the doorstep...

A call from the side brought Roman back to his senses.

The battle plan written by Dick had also been reviewed by the other Conquest Knights.

"Dick has written well, but do not be complacent. Focus on training soldiers," Roman said as he stood up.

Sige Town was a tough nut to crack, but for the five major nobles, no bone was too hard to chew.

First, you had to hit the south wall once to see how hard it was.

Secondly, you had to jump into the Yellow River once to die.

Dick had once followed his lord to campaign over the ownership of a salt field.

If they were the victors, they would earn the profits of the salt field, either buying it outright or sharing the profits.

However, as the losers, they gained nothing.

This was also why the territories of some large nobles were often very fragmented.

A piece here, a piece there, and hundreds of miles away another swath of land spanning thousands of acres.

For example, Earl Kant.

Although he is a grand noble from the countryside, Roman guaranteed that he definitely had several estates or territories on other lords’ land or towns, or else pastures and wastelands.

Those lands provided him with a certain income every year.

Sige Town was a thousand miles away from the Duke Domain, which did not prevent the Riptide Grand Duke from owning a piece of land in a remote and unknown backwater under the nose of the Black Iron King.

As for why he had it?

It was naturally the spoils of war and conquest.

For instance, during the Silver Moon War, the territory of the Silver Moon Lord was dismembered by other nobles, and it was uncertain if nobles hundreds of miles away had not also invested money and effort, clearly coming to share in the spoils—how could they leave empty-handed?

Since they couldn’t divide up money, they could only offer land.

After all, it wasn’t their own.

...

This spring, it looked like there would be a tough battle to fight.

The urgent task now was to clear and cultivate the land.

They needed to deep plow the remaining four thousand acres of land, plant crops urgently, and then free up the labor force for farming to do other things.

Roman was preparing to expand the iron forging scale.

Since it was the spring planting season, there were only about four or five hundred people in the coal and iron department, but even so, the production was not to be underestimated.

Iron ore piled up like mountains, and producing a thousand pounds of steel per day was not a problem.

In the agricultural age, this steel output was indeed excessive.

Even if he didn’t sell salt, Roman selling iron would be enough to make a fortune.

And this would attract even more covetous gazes.

The hydroelectric hammer worked day and night, meaning that dozens of blades or agricultural implements were forged daily, after all, there were two hundred people at the blacksmith shed and the forging skills were improving.

The unforged iron ingots were stored for future use.

...

Roman followed the crowd to the army camp.

Soldiers with disabilities like Tucker had already been discharged, and veterans would receive more privileges.

There was no alternative, in this era, only the disabled could retire.

"How are these new recruits?" Roman asked.

The new recruits were from the conscript army they had captured, physically and fundamentally stronger than ordinary people, definitely better than farmers.

"They’re very dedicated in training," said Dick.

The dedication came from the motivation.

In secret, Jet was called the devil instructor by the soldiers.

It was all because he was naturally strict, tough in style, and his talent was standardization.

Whenever a soldier’s actions slightly deviated from the standards, he would whip them.

He always had a reason every time he acted, treating everyone equally and not based solely on personal preferences, so he only inspired fear, not hatred.

"Some new recruits are performing excellently..." Dick pointed at the new recruits standing separately in a line in the training ground.

Roman recognized some of them as his Angel Envoys.

One of them had also been pulled by him into a simulated battlefield.

Currently, they were only trained in formation and had not been armed yet.

Their conditions for training were much better than the troops like those from Dota.

The latter were trained from scratch by Aaron, while the former only needed to learn the latter’s formation style.

They had good potential but poor basics; first, the discipline needed to be raised, as Roman didn’t want a mob that would fail and scatter, but a professional army that could regroup even after a cavalry attack.

Collapsing armies were different.

The former dispersed instantly, vanishing without a trace.

The latter, once finding their core again, could quickly regroup and strike back, giving the barbarians of this era a huge inter-era surprise!

In just over half a month, the training was very effective, at least superficially proper.

But Roman could see the issues.

For example, the discipline was superficial and had not yet seeped into their marrow.

Training soldiers was inherently a long-term process, bringing all soldiers’ physical fitness and combat discipline to the maximum required subtly changing their behavior patterns and mental habits.

But this task was estimated to take two to three years; otherwise, it wouldn’t work out.