Road to the Crown

Chapter 253: Moving out

24th July 1574

"Pack your stuff and move out!"

With the same command resounding through the entire camp of the whole united army, the commotion was inevitable. Yet despite how short my troops had to train, just as the teachers from the long-gone Roman empire taught me back when I was in the school in my original timeline, setting and moving the camp was one of the priority tasks that every single soldier of mine had to know by his soul before even getting his hands on my weapons!

After all, in the real world, warfare wasn't about the fighting prowess of the troops. Obviously, the more men one had, not to speak about their discipline and quality of weapons, the better his army would be on the surface But when everything came down to reality, it was the logistical capability that decided who would win the war!

In fact, the more disciplined one's troops were, the easier it was to supply them, while not having to worry about the provisions being stolen by the army, and resupplied according to the communists' law of the stronger fists getting the better stuff.

"Make sure you packed all of your belongings. Try not to break any parts of the tents while packing them up!"

In comparison to the entire army, my personal camp was doing rather nicely. Rather than causing chaos in every single place with people smashing against each other in rush to get as many provisions for the road as they could, every single team instantly split the tasks between their members, resulting in four people taking care of taking down their shared tent, two more people queuing up to get the dry rations for the first day of the travel and with the last two men making sure that everything was going smoothly and helping out whenever a need arouse. 

"Damn It's a feast for the eyes to observe your people If only our entire army could work like that"

Standing beside me, Peter commented on the ongoing process of packing up, while intentionally putting his back towards the pitiful sight appearing everywhere else.

"Trust me, you can't afford to do so. It's not like it's their training alone."

Shrugging my arms, I cast my sight towards the pile of resources that was currently in the process of being split between today's rations and the provisions for the future. With how procuring food would turn to be more and more challenging with each passing day due to how enormous our army was, I knew that without paying my personal attention to providing for my men, the longer the campaign would last, the harder it would get to feed them, especially with how the entire eastern frontier was apparently burning down!

Yet as much as it already sounded like a pain in my ass, when I thought about how much I would have to pay for the increasing price of the food along the way, just to make sure that my troops would be well feed 

"What do you mean by that? While I can get that crafting or buying those weapons of yours and ammunition for them might be expensive, in the end, costs of the supplies for a single soldier is not that big. And seeing how they act, how could you call that being more disciplined and organised is something that would increase their costs? I would rather say it would end up being the opposite!"

After Peter finally confirmed the news about the invasion with his own means, I knew that I had to start working on him in order to ensure that one more powerful backer would enter the court during my trail after the war. That's why, rather than just rolling my eyes and dismiss him with some kind of half-assed reply, I paid him my full attention to the point where I actually turned myself towards him, rather than watching over the process of packing up!

"If you want to have disciplined troops, then you can't rely on people you recruit on the spot. Without the stable, standing army, without the people that could call a war their profession, you will never be able to achieve this standard. Just like you said, maintaining them is far cheaper than maintaining a freshly formed army, but with how you need to do it for every single day, rather than only during the times of need, the costs are piling up. In fact, with how every single soldier of mine is recruited from the workers of my projects, whenever I look at them, I feel both pride at what they already managed to achieve, but also the pain of knowing how much more they could do if they stayed as workers."

In fact, when I spoke those words, I wasn't even lying. With how I left my development officers back at the mining town with plans for several other projects I hoped they would manage to implement during my absence, I knew that I had to restart the beer business as soon as possible, otherwise the constantly growing industrial area of mine would soon start stalling due to the lack of money to pay for the workforce!

That was another reason why I was so eager to sell those weapons of mine to the country, as it would give me this huge leeway in terms of cash flow, allowing me to push the development even further!

"To be honest, I never looked at this in this way Anyway, as we will be travelling east, do you think it would be possible to finalize the transaction we spoke about before in Sandomir? With how close your rented land is to the city, I think it will be the best moment to do so, won't you agree?"

With Peter himself finally moving his sight away from the mess of the army camp, I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was really serious with this proposition of his. Yet just like I did before when we were speaking about this, I had to crush his hopes.

"I'm sorry, but before I see the money, I won't provide a single weapon to your forces. With how Commonwealth allowed Ostros to ravage my lands, I don't see any reasons why I should put my people at risk while helping this country out. Force the Ostros to cough up the money, while making sure they won't get even a single piece, and we might continue this topic.