Chapter 37: The Power of the New Artillery

“We must launch a nationwide mobilization. We absolutely cannot allow that butcher from the Song Kingdom to occupy England, or our fate will be little better than that of the slaveholders in Jinzhou!”

That was one of the legislators who had been frightened half to death by Sun Li.

“Mobilization? We only abolished the mobilization decree a few months ago. How many men can we raise at a time like this? Those two hundred thousand revolutionary troops are already the largest force we can possibly assemble. Besides, the Song Kingdom has brought only one hundred thousand men. We have ample weapons, and our soldiers possess an unwavering revolutionary spirit. We may not be unable to fight them!”

That was the reasoning of a legislator who knew absolutely nothing about military affairs.

“All the troops who landed this time are elite Song forces. We cannot afford to be careless. Our chances in a pitched battle are poor. Most of the revolutionary army are raw recruits, incapable of conducting high-intensity field operations.”

At least that legislator still had a little sense.

At that moment, the National Assembly of the provisional government had descended into chaos over the landing of Sun Li’s army. These capitalists, who had only just seized the highest power in the country, had barely begun to flex their muscles before encountering the most ruthless butcher in the world.

There was no exaggeration in that judgment. Sun Li’s campaign of slaughter and suppression in Jinzhou had been every bit as brutal as that of the Elven Empire, if not worse. At least the Elven Empire had shown favor to the wealthy classes that defected to its side. The Song Kingdom, apart from granting a few benefits to those white traitors, had treated every white man like a fat pig and hacked them apart without mercy.

That was also why the Song Kingdom’s treasury had suddenly become so wealthy. The profits from the gold mines would have required time to accumulate. There was no way they could have enabled Sun Li to recruit an army of one hundred thousand so quickly, while also organizing several hundred thousand second-line garrison troops.

Under the capitalists’ usual habits, they would have simply abandoned every place Sun Li reached, found somewhere safe, and continued financing the war against him. But these men had only just seized national power and chopped off the emperor’s head. How could they willingly flee with nothing but their gold coins?

Their factories and foundations were all on the island of England!

Thus, a group of furious and terrified capitalist magnates spent their days shouting in the Assembly about attacking this place and defending that one, yet never managed to reach a sound—or even unified—conclusion.

Only the Earl of Glamorgan and a group of his trusted men continued strengthening the army. The old earl, now past fifty, had once taken part in the war against the Madrid Empire and possessed at least some basic military knowledge. He was far more capable than those legislators who knew only how to brawl with words in the Assembly.

And so, amid the provisional government’s chaotic debates, while the Earl of Glamorgan prepared to stake everything on one desperate battle with bloodshot eyes, the vanguard of Sun Li’s Song army—twenty thousand men—arrived at the front line facing the Norman family and the revolutionary army.

Under the earl’s careful preparations, more than one hundred and fifty thousand revolutionary troops had been deployed there, tightly encircling the entire Norman family. Breastworks, rudimentary trenches, chevaux-de-frise, and other defensive measures had been constructed. If Sun Li had only given him more time, the Earl of Glamorgan would have loved to build a complete bastion fortification system, preferably one like that at the entrance to the Isliya Peninsula.

But there had not been enough time. Everything remained a fantasy.

On the second day after Sun Li’s vanguard arrived, the Redcoats launched their attack. The force did not even possess cavalry. It simply began by using artillery loaded with grenades to bombard the revolutionary army’s breastworks—hardly formidable, though intimidating in appearance—for half a day.

To the revolutionary troops on the front line, those twelve hours felt longer than half a year.

Exploding shells?

This new weapon was still being studied by the English Royal Academy of Sciences—oh, right. There was no Royal Academy of Sciences anymore.

In any case, the revolutionary soldiers had never even heard of such a thing. They were bombarded again and again.

By the time the wealthy Song army had finished its cannonade and advanced in deep lines arranged shoulder to shoulder, many revolutionary soldiers were still hiding in the trenches, too frightened to come out.

The officers and soldiers were hardly any better.

The English Revolution had thoroughly exterminated the officer corps that supported the royal aristocracy. Then, with the revolutionary army expanding at breakneck speed, the quality of its officers had fallen to the level of a bad joke.

Many of them were trusted retainers of the Earl of Glamorgan and the various capitalist magnates. They were skilled enough at arithmetic, bookkeeping, and business, but when it came to commanding troops, the result was obvious: the moment the Song artillery roared, most of them dropped flat on the ground and dared not move.

Then the Song Kingdom’s line infantry advanced in perfect formation, as relaxed as if they were taking part in a military parade. They soon reached the enemy breastworks. One man supported another, allowing him to vault over the obstacle, and then they began clearing out the revolutionary soldiers who were not afraid to die, along with the officers who either could not believe what was happening—or simply refused to believe it.

There was little resistance. Under the Song army’s volleys and bayonets, the most important task of the vanguard became accepting prisoners. There were still plenty of men who valued their lives.

The defensive line so painstakingly arranged by the Earl of Glamorgan collapsed completely within a single day.

In truth, the fighting had lasted only three hours.

Sun Li soon received a report from the vanguard and discovered that the obstacle hindering the Song army’s advance was not resistance from the earl’s second-rate troops, but the sheer number of enemy prisoners. Twenty thousand men had to guard several times their own number in captives. They had no way to continue advancing.

Sun Li stared at the report with helpless amusement. This battle seemed little different from the later campaigns in Jinzhou. The newly established English provisional government simply did not know how to wage war.

The victory had been achieved partly because the destructive power and terrifying psychological impact of the Song Kingdom’s new grenades had been overwhelming.

But another part of the reason was that the revolutionary soldiers were simply too amateurish.

Even by the standards of the revolutionary army, they were amateurs.

The Earl of Glamorgan’s original plan had been to use his vast cannon-fodder forces to wear down the Song elite. Even a ridiculous casualty ratio of one to ten would have been acceptable.

Who could have imagined that these new recruits, drawn from farmers and laborers, would all turn into cowards the moment the artillery opened fire? And the so-called trusted men whom the capitalists had placed in command of the army were, without exception, a pack of useless drunkards and gluttons.

Fortunately, I placed fifty thousand revolutionary troops seasoned by war in the rear. They still have the strength to put up a fight. At least now we know the extent of the enemy’s firepower. A frontal battle is clearly impossible. But England is such a small, shallow country—does it even have the room to wage a guerrilla war against the Song Kingdom?

The Earl of Glamorgan seemed to see that his end was not far away.

That Victoria was truly ruthless. She had actually committed treason, bundling herself and the entire Norman family up and delivering them to the butcher Sun Li!

At that moment, the earl’s heart held nothing but curses for Victoria, the true culprit behind their disaster.

In fact, without the support of the Norman family, Sun Li’s attempt to force a landing on the island of England would have been a very different matter. With the island’s well-developed industrial infrastructure and its years of preparation against amphibious invasion, it would have been impossible to say who would ultimately have prevailed. Sun Li would have had to cross the ocean using the primitive logistical technology of this era.

That was why only Sun Li, with the system constantly supplying him with fresh troops, dared attempt a forced landing on England. No other country would have dared invade an island nation with such advanced weapons and powerful industry—not even the great island powers of the past.

But Victoria’s surrender had completely ruined the Earl of Glamorgan’s plans. He had clearly never imagined that she would truly abandon the glory of the past. He had never put himself in her place and considered whether anyone trapped in such desperate circumstances could still afford to care about glory.

Of course, the Earl of Glamorgan would not think that deeply. Nor was he willing to consider Victoria’s predicament. In his simple and shallow mind, everything was the result of that woman’s greed. Blinded by self-interest, Victoria had betrayed England’s national interests and forced the entire island to tremble beneath the iron hooves of Sun Li the butcher.

And indeed, when news of the collapse at the front reached them, the great men of the provisional government truly began to tremble.

Many even entertained fantasies of secretly negotiating with Sun Li. Unfortunately, their messengers vanished without a trace and received no reply at all. Sun Li’s attitude was obvious enough. How could he possibly refrain from taking a savage cut from such a rich country as England?

With this entire class of fat-pig capitalists at his mercy, the gold and resources he acquired would be enough for Sun Li to rebuild a city modeled on the Song Kingdom right there on the island of England.

A town center, barracks, universities, and everything else would be no problem. England would become the most important stepping stone in Sun Li’s conquest of the continent of Europa. Naturally, he would have to develop it properly, investing vast sums of money. Recruitment alone would cost a fortune.

Ever since plundering a batch of fat pigs in Jinzhou, Sun Li had grown increasingly enamored with the promising profession of robbery. Unfortunately, apart from the newly emerged capitalist nation of the English Empire, which was rich enough to drip gold, the other countries did not possess much wealth.

The Light God Kingdom, with its technological barbarism, was not even worth mentioning. Its backward system of production doomed it to poverty for generations. The Isliya Peninsula had once been quite wealthy, but several great wars had drained it, and Amaska was now tightening its belt just to expand its army. The territory of the Dwarf Empire had never been fertile land, so the fact that it had managed to produce so many troops was already proof that the dwarves had exhausted themselves to the point of bleeding.

As for the Elven Empire, its obsessive devotion to art meant that Sun Li expected little in the way of gold coins, though he believed valuable artworks would be easy enough to plunder.

Therefore, England alone—the fat pig that had never suffered the ravages of war and had grown bloated from doing business with every nation on the continent of Europa—was truly wealthy.

Before attacking the Eastern Continent, this was probably the only time he would be able to gorge himself in a single bite. Everything that followed would be genuine, bitter, hard-fought warfare.

While Sun Li was reflecting on this, the entire one-hundred-thousand-strong Song army advanced into the heart of the island. The problem of the enormous number of prisoners was resolved as soon as the main force arrived. The end of the Earl of Glamorgan and the provisional government was drawing near.

Would the Earl of Glamorgan, the man who had brought down the English Empire in a single stroke, manage to give Sun Li a pleasant surprise?

Two weeks after the Song Kingdom’s landing, the army of one hundred thousand stood beneath the walls of the capital. The entire English provisional government was shrouded in gloom and despair.

It seemed that everything was about to end.