noveltune Chapter 95 Small Training Exercise
Chapter 95 Small Training Exercise
Chapter 95 Small Training Exercise
Roger was a chauvinist by nature, and in his past life, his secretary would naturally take care of things when needed.
So he didn't want to guess the girls' various little thoughts and walked towards the training ground on his own.
Roger had only ten soldiers under his command with varying abilities, and he didn't standardize their training.
The training content is also highly personalized; those who like sword and shield use sword and shield, those who are good at using pistols use pistols, and others use battle axes, etc.
Weapons such as maces and flails vary from person to person. Compared to team combat, more emphasis is placed on the performance of individual combat skills, and at most, people may practice shield formations.
Once the armed forces were formally established, Roger, based on his limited knowledge from his previous life and the descriptions of English army tactics by Marne and others, added three important training subjects: physical training, horseback riding practice, and guerrilla warfare.
The physical training is not complicated. Every morning and evening, two people carry a hundred-pound log and run two miles, going uphill and downhill, not just on flat ground.
The horse riding practice was not complicated. Roger's black mare, the stable's mixed horses, and the dredges and draft horses borrowed from the estate were all used. As long as you could ride a horse and run and do some simple swinging and striking movements, that was fine.
Roger doesn't expect to be able to fight the enemy on horseback for the time being.
Guerrilla warfare was Roger's carefully considered and crucial strategy.
Marne, who had extensive combat experience, said that the Scottish armies often suffered more defeats than victories in direct confrontations with the English.
The English knights, heavy infantry, and longbowmen worked in close coordination.
When faced with an offensive by enemy infantry and cavalry with superior numbers, the English would usually seize advantageous terrain first, and form dense formations with heavy infantry or dismounted knights, using chevaux-de-frise to protect the longbowmen and prevent the enemy from rushing to the front lines for close combat, allowing the longbowmen to continuously unleash a rain of arrows and provide sustained firepower.
When the enemy's formation became chaotic or began to collapse, the English would send their knights on horseback to charge and kill the enemy.
When the enemy cavalry does not have a clear advantage, or when the infantry has the advantage and has formed a dense formation to adopt a defensive posture, the English will usually use longbowmen to fire a hail of arrows to disrupt the enemy formation, and the cavalry will charge the enemy formation under the cover of the archers.
The Scottish army had neither strong and tall cavalry nor heavy infantry capable of both offense and defense, and was always easily crushed by the English on the main battlefield.
From the Falkirk debacle a few years ago to the Galloway rout this year, the lessons learned from the repeated defeats of his predecessors have made Roger understand that he should never confront the English army head-on when the strength of the army is mismatched.
Although Roger didn't understand what "Fabian tactics" were, he had been exposed to the idea of guerrilla warfare since childhood, and his smuggling business was essentially a special kind of guerrilla warfare.
Roger told everyone, "From now on, we will treat the English army as a pack of fierce wolves and ourselves as hunters."
"When facing fierce wolves, we must learn to track tracks, set traps, and then rush in to kill them after they enter the traps. If the wolves are in a pack or attack us, then we must hide and escape."
Roger's military theory did not conform to traditional chivalry, but he silenced everyone with just two sentences: "Don't feel ashamed, dignified people have become the skeletons of Falkirk."
Training corresponding to guerrilla warfare principles also began under Roger's guidance.
Roger improved upon the extensive experience he had accumulated in his previous life of circumventing customs and evading smuggling, and applied it to training practice.
They would sneak around checkpoints in the dark, traverse mountains and valleys, disguise themselves, and sneak through checkpoints, as well as engage in various forms of smuggling and infiltration.
In order to open up a channel for smuggled goods to pass through customs, he once led his "employees" to secretly dig a three-kilometer underground tunnel along the border, which took more than half a year to complete.
Times and environments may differ, but the underlying principles of theory and methodology remain the same.
The key to guerrilla warfare lies in "fighting," but its essence lies in "moving." That's why Roger had everyone practice endurance and physical fitness, and practice riding horses, all for the purpose of "moving and dodging."
When he was young, the man with the bitter face followed Roger's grandfather to do business and trade. He said that the Isle of Arran is a microcosm of the whole of Scotland.
On the Isle of Arran, you can find all of Scotland's terrain, from towering mountains to barren meadows.
Arran Island provided Roger with the best training ground. Every week, he would take his soldiers and a small amount of supplies to the island to practice "wilderness survival" and use safari-style training to simulate marching and stealth operations in various terrains.
The results of the training made Roger somewhat ashamed; what Roger considered the most arduous wilderness survival training was no problem at all in the eyes of others.
Putting aside Marne, Olaf, Donald, Connor, and others, even the two bald guys with ponytails, who were both thugs, thought that spending three days and two nights in the damp, cold wilderness was perfectly normal.
Roger, however, was not used to it. After sleeping fully clothed in the damp forest for two nights, Roger's whole body ached, and the dry grass and fallen leaves on the ground made him feel uncomfortable.
Roger then realized that he was the only one who truly needed training in wilderness survival; for everyone else, it was as simple as instinct.
Besides training, Roger also tried to educate his group of rough men.
After finishing the day's training, Roger hung a wooden board on the wall of the barracks with English and Latin letters written on it to teach everyone.
Thanks to the Plantagenet family's hammers, English is one of the common official languages in the British Isles, including Scotland, and is much more widely spoken than French and Latin, with many people able to speak a few words.
But being able to speak doesn't mean being able to read and write.
Teaching illiterate people to write was an unprecedented feat, but the outcome was predictable.
In the dim candlelight, eight out of ten pairs of eyes stared blankly at the symbols on the wooden board, like fools.
Marne very tactfully asked Roger to end the ridiculous literacy training so that the guys could relax and have some drinks and gamble after a hard day of training.
Roger had no choice but to compromise and combine the literacy campaign with drinking and gambling. Anyone who could learn to write a letter each day would be rewarded with a can of beer.
The game at the gambling table turned into a letter guessing game. Luo Jie gave five letters and half a silver penny. Whoever guessed all the letters correctly got the silver penny, and whoever guessed incorrectly had to write it twenty times.
Every night, a group of rough men would gather around a wooden board inscribed with astronomical symbols, carrying bottles of liquor, to place bets.
Despite its educational and entertaining approach, most people would struggle to learn even two words in three days, because the letter they learned the night before would be washed away with a pee the next morning.
However, Roger also discovered that the bald man, who usually slacked off and ranked last in training, actually had a talent for learning.
In order to win money by drinking, the bald man actually learned all the English letters and half of the Latin alphabet in thirty days, and even learned ten Latin numbers.
This guy isn't really suited to a career as a soldier.
He was quick-witted and eloquent, but he often cheated and shirked his duties on the training field, and his training results and attitude were consistently among the worst.
After two months of observation, and considering his good learning ability and excellent speaking skills, Roger decided to train him as a "diplomatic talent".
In the future, giving him the status of an advisor or diplomat to represent him in making friends with allies from all sides would probably be useful.
Similar to the bald guy is the black dog who ranks second to last. In fact, he is very serious about training and has a fierce streak.
However, this guy is too slow to understand, and even a bit stupid. He can become a qualified soldier, but it would be too far-fetched to train him as an officer.
Therefore, Roger planned to train him as a personal bodyguard, at least to ensure the guy's loyalty.
With such "high-intensity" training every day, it was already mid-December.
One day, after distributing everyone's wages in the lobby of the Milk House Manor, the man with the sour face closed his small iron box and said to Roger, who was smiling broadly beside him, "Sir, I have something to tell you, and you might not be smiling after you hear it."
Roger smiled and handed three and a half silver pennies to the last fisherman who was receiving his wages, waiting for the bitter-faced man to continue.
"I have inventoried your treasury; there are less than thirty pounds left."
Because the saltworks and textile mills were unable to sell their products, Bitter Gourd Face had to take money from the treasury to pay salaries and purchase raw materials.
There were about thirty hands in the manor, more than twenty hands in the saltworks, and nearly twenty hands in the textile factory. The silver pennies in the iron box of the vault on the second floor were being stolen at a rate of two pounds and a dozen shillings per week.
At this rate, Milk House Manor will completely run out of funds by the end of February next year.
Milk House Farm urgently needs to recoup its funds.
Roger was a man of action. At noon, when the man with a sour face issued a warning about the financial crisis, he gathered a team of people that afternoon.
Roger led the team, accompanied by his assistant, a man with a bitter face. Toran and the old fisherman each led several fishermen in two boats. Marn and Olaf each led four soldiers in two boats to escort them. Gray Rat and his henchmen were also brought along.
This team shoulders four important tasks.
The main purpose was to collect northern goods such as wool, leather, highland beef, ale, dried fruit, and medicinal herbs.
After the new textile mill is built, the export sales of wool from the North will decrease. At present, the finished cloth is still in the trial production stage, and the output is only enough for domestic demand and cannot meet the export demand. Refined salt itself is not a bulk commodity, so Roger must increase profits by purchasing large quantities of goods from the North and transporting them to the South.
It's not easy to go south, and he can't leave the boat half empty.
While collecting wool, coarse salt from the saltworks and trial-produced cloth from the textile mills will also be sold on board.
This is why Roger had to bring his grumpy-faced butler along; the old man was more familiar with trade than Roger was, and he knew the market conditions in various places best.
The secondary objective was to inquire about and recruit technical personnel and search for copper resources in order to prepare for the future manufacture of bronze cannons.
Roger attempted to make beneficial explorations and innovative improvements to the metallurgical industry, but the development of productivity is by no means a matter of a day or two, not to mention that he himself was only a novice.
So after much deliberation, he decided to start with the bronze cannon, which had the lowest technical difficulty. The situation was pressing, and the turbulent times would not wait for him to slowly manufacture high-strength steel.
The second objective was to gather intelligence. Last time, Gray Rat brought back a lot of important information, which also made Roger realize the value of thugs. This time, he had Gray Rat accompany him and gave the henchmen a task to gather information, hoping to collect some more reliable information through these two guys.
The final objective was to train the team. The last trip south was fraught with risks, and this time Roger planned to take both ships south with him. Therefore, he needed to train the team in safe waters to avoid any mishaps.
This time, Roger singled out a former pirate henchman. After observing him for six months, he discovered that this henchman was actually a ruthless and vicious person.
In addition, given his orphan background and the hardships he had endured, he was considered a potential future intelligence agent. Therefore, when Gray Rat was sent out of the island to gather information, he brought this little henchman along.
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