Chapter 183 - 125: Concise Covenant 88 Strikes

There are many ways to categorize armies, but the most representative is dividing them into four major types: classical armies, mercenary armies, modern armies, and contemporary armies. The backbone of classical armies was the citizen-soldier—for example, the fierce soldiers of the Qin, the Northern Dynasties’ government troops, even Sparta, Macedonia, and Rome (in the republican era)—all can be considered classical armies. Their soldiers were citizens, freemen (during the era of slavery), or small landlords and self-sustaining farmers (under feudalism). Soldiers occupied a relatively high social status, usually trained of their own accord, joined voluntarily, and tended to have strong fighting spirit. The internal driving force behind these classical armies was the sense of personal honor and the hope of raising one’s social standing; as the classical era ended, it became nearly impossible to replicate this. Mercenary armies, on the other hand, are groups formed through entanglements of personal interest. Their main feature is that soldiers are under the personal control of the generals; the soldiers belong to the general, with the army made up of a small amount of elite and a large number of poorly trained, destitute commoners. In battle, they rely primarily on the elites—once the elites fall, the rest of the commoners scatter to the winds. Representative examples include the Ming Dynasty’s border armies, the Song Dynasty’s Imperial Guard, various Western knightly orders, all sorts of chaotic nomadic tribes, and pirate groups—they all qualify as mercenary armies. The combat motivation of such armies mainly relies on violent oppression, rewards of loot, or pillage and rape. They generally lack initiative in battle, and their overall combat effectiveness is a complete joke. At present, all the major Daimyo and powerful clans in Japan use this kind of military model, going to war with a "Lang Faction + Ashigaru" system. Modern armies, in contrast, are made up of professional officers and large numbers of trained poor soldiers. The soldiers, as the main force, are subjected to harsh and professional training under the whip of a handful of officers, until their minds go blank and they become mechanical combat puppets. Then they can charge forward in neat ranks, regardless of life and death, and proactively engage the enemy in attritional warfare. The typical modern army would be the national armies during Napoleon’s era in the West. The driving force of these armies comes mainly from discipline—the soldiers fear military law more than death—so under the pressure of discipline, even in a daze they can display outstanding combat effectiveness, truly achieving the spirit of not retreating in the face of death. As for contemporary armies, let’s not even mention those. In the Japan Middle Ages, it’s absolutely impossible to develop such armies—there aren’t any of the necessary prerequisites for them to appear. Then, with Harano’s current circumstances, he simply doesn’t have the social foundation for a classical army—at least, for now he doesn’t have enough free citizens with a sense of honor to find, so that route is out; He doesn’t like mercenary armies either: if he gathers a bunch of Household Retainers, and they in turn recruit more Household Retainers and Lang Faction, eventually his subordinates will be filled with their own little hills and factions, everyone keeping their own books. If just one Household Retainer slackens off and their men go off robbing and raping at will, or some retainer openly leads his men to gamble in broad daylight... If things like that really happened, knowing his temperament, he’d be up all night, sick with disgust. On top of that, he can only use the weapons already existing in the Japan Middle Ages, not even daring to attempt any large-scale improvements. If his army’s organizational structure is just as birds-of-a-feather as the local natives, then he really wouldn’t have much of an advantage—his little life could be in danger at any moment. So forming a purely profit-driven mercenary army is also out of the question. That leaves only the path of the modern army: restrain soldiers with harsh discipline, turn them into professional combat puppets, go out to rob—sorry, I mean rescue—more people, then train more combat puppets, ensuring that whoever brings up his name in the future has to shiver twice, everyone as tame as a quail. As for whose workbook to copy from... Yuan Shikai’s model isn’t bad. Harano remembered that old lesson on the "Xiaozhan Training," and recalled something of it. He picked people from among the laborers, selecting 140 of the physically robust and already somewhat disciplined workers from his workshops, assigning them into fourteen squads of ten men each—thus forming his first proper military unit, or at least laying the skeleton of a proper army. Then, he took out the "Training Manual" that he’d stolen, brainstormed, and sweated over in two months of study outside, split it up into several booklets of varying thickness—"Eighty-Eight Simple Laws," "Camp Regulations," "Personal Skill and Tactics Training Method," "Monthly Pay and Benefits Agreement," "Camp Study Rules," and so on. He handed them to Ah Man, Ah Qing, and the "Military Police Team," made up of veteran Lang Faction, to assist with training. Ah Man saw Harano up to his new tricks again, but didn’t jump to criticize him as before. After all, Harano had already succeeded several times, so she’d grown a little bit smarter and didn’t dare spout shit at random. She directly picked up the "Eighty-Eight Simple Laws," opened it up, and was surprised to find it wasn’t a swordsmanship manual, but a concise and brutal set of military laws: 1. Those who advance or retreat in battle without orders, or fail to return to the ranks after battle—execute. 2. Those who look back, hesitate, or whisper on the battlefield—execute. 3. Those who flee from assignments or training, or fake injuries or illness—execute. 4. Those who, during drills, lose their equipment, or those who abandon their weapons on the battlefield without injuries—execute. ... 86. Those who cry out overnight, run amok, sneak out of the camp in the middle of the night, or gather to gamble, drink, or make merry—everyone involved will be executed as a warning. 87. Those who harass the populace, loot property, rape women—any soldier in the flag, all to be executed as a warning. 88. If a commanding officer is killed in battle, and the subordinate officers did not offer strong support and suffered not a single casualty; or if, when a squad is wiped out, their own men suffer no injuries and achieve no merit—all will be executed as a warning. Listed out one by one, it’s truly brutal—even skipping training is grounds for decapitation. Just reading it feels bloody and chilling... Ah Man skimmed through it at lightning speed, and felt her scalp tingle by the end. Her desire to become Grand General immediately vanished; if she joined this regiment, she figured within six hours her head would be rolling and buried in the earth. She swallowed nervously, closed the booklet with some difficulty, and said, "Uh... Lord, not that I’m criticizing you or anything—it’s not that I think you’re just making stuff up, it’s just... shouldn’t the military code be a little less strict? With this many death sentences, how many people do you think will be left? All these people are ones you spent money to buy—wouldn’t it be a waste?" Harano was firm in his conviction. He shook his head: "The army must have strict law and order. There’s no room for sentiment here—don’t even think about bargaining! So even if I have to kill this entire batch, the precedent needs to be set!" After speaking, he handed her the "Camp Regulations" as well: "This is the daily set of rules and protocols—make sure you study it closely too. They’ll have to memorize this one by heart; anyone who can’t recite it gets beaten—beaten until they know it backwards!" Ah Man took the even thicker booklet, glanced through it quickly, and exclaimed, "What? Even laundry, bathing, and cleaning the rooms are regulated? It all has to be this spotless?" "Of course it has to!" Internal affairs are vital—this is top priority. But it’s not just about cultivating discipline as most people think, or at least that’s not the main reason. Most people simply don’t understand the horrors of stuffing ten men in a small room—without strict house rules, within three days the place turns into a filthy, stinking pigsty. Hygiene will get so bad that contagious disease will break out, and you’ll have people puking and shitting uncontrollably. People really can die! At the very least, every day there’ll be someone too sick to train, causing all sorts of non-combat attrition. Harano handed her a short wooden stick. "This area needs to be enforced even more strictly. Anyone who doesn’t comply gets beaten. But it’s not convenient for me to do the beating myself—you’ll do it for me. No one in the camp gets an exception." Ah Man weighed the stick in her hand. She remembered that Harano seemed to be enrolling too, so she glanced over at him thoughtfully: "Everyone?" "Not me—I’ll follow the rules on my own, you don’t need to bother with me." Harano would of course lead by example, but he still made a hasty patch, to stop this wild kid from finding a reason to try beating the lord himself—the sort of thing she might actually do. He added sternly, "What you need to do is important: enforce the code strictly. No hitting people on a whim. If that happens, don’t blame me for making an example out of you in public." Ah Man knew he meant business, so she nodded honestly: "Alright, you’re the lord, you make the rules. I’ll take these booklets and memorize them first myself. No one will be able to fault my memory. You can count on my head." After this, she hesitated, but still couldn’t help adding a word of heartfelt warning: "But... will this work? Chopping heads and beating people nonstop—what if these guys can’t take it and rebel? Not that I’m afraid of a mutiny—with our dozen armored fighters, we could take them down pretty easily—just seems wasteful is all, since these people are property." "Pure high-pressure doesn’t work, of course. There need to be benefits as well—but I’ll handle all that. You don’t have to worry!" Harano patted the "Monthly Pay and Benefits Agreement" and the "Camp Study Rules." "They only have to endure for two and a half years. This period counts as their redemption period. After two years, they become freemen, can leave camp, get priority for buying houses, land, or boats, microloans, mass matchmaking, all sorts of perks. As long as discipline is enforced fairly and they follow orders, no one gets punished, and the monthly pay is way beyond what they’d get in the workshop. Most people should be able to put up with it and won’t try to stir up trouble—so you don’t need to worry so much." "So I play the bad guy, and you’re the nice guy, huh!" Ah Man wasn’t stupid. She caught on immediately—one plays good cop, the other bad cop. But she didn’t really care—aside from Ah Qing and Harano, she didn’t have many friends anyway, and she actually preferred being feared over being liked. Still, after flipping through the "Monthly Pay and Benefits Agreement," she paused: "Let them go free in just two and a half years? And if they’re hurt or crippled you have to find them work and keep supporting them—won’t that be a huge loss?" "If you don’t allow them to retire, you just end up with cowardly, death-fearing loafers—those people are useless to keep anyway." Harano had thought it over many times, drawing on advanced experience from later eras. Now that he said it, he felt no more hesitation. "Let’s try it first. Besides, after two and a half years they’ll be used to army life and may not even want to leave. We can re-sign with those that stay, repeating the cycle until the day they’re unfit to fight." Ah Man hesitated a little, but agreed to give it a try—after all, every time Harano said, "let’s try it," he’d succeeded, and maybe this time would be the same. She stopped arguing and flipped through the "Camp Study Rules," amazed again: "You’re even opening a school in the army? What can those idiots learn?" "This is for selecting officers. Those who perform well in training and show promise are admitted to ’Camp Studies,’ where they can learn basic characters, arithmetic, marching, camping skills, and so on—becoming junior officers. After that, the capable rise, the incapable fall." For this, Harano planned to teach personally, serving as principal for the first batch—this would boost loyalty, and since he wasn’t planning massive recruitment of Household Retainers, he’d have to train his command staff himself. After that, he handed the "Personal Skill and Tactics Training Method" to Ah Qing. "This one’s for you—the methods in there I gathered piecemeal, so I’m not sure how good they are. Have a look, edit them as you like; in the future, besides helping Ah Man, you’ll be in charge of teaching archery and spear technique." Ah Qing nodded lightly, took the manual, and flipped through it with full confidence. She had faith in her martial arts skills, and didn’t find this difficult. Harano then called over the dozen veteran Lang Faction set to serve as military police, motioning for Ah Man to read the military code and regulations to them. They were to memorize and internalize it at once, and offer their suggestions—a wider pool of ideas, in case he himself, brainstorming alone, made mistakes and ended up lopping off fewer heads than necessary. For now, this was all he could do. After all, in the modern era, he was just an ordinary person—this was the best solution he could think of. The only question was what the real results would be, and whether this would help him survive this damned era. All he could do now was hope it really worked...