Chapter 193: War Time Repression
Throughout the entire kidnapped princess debacle, other countries hadn't stopped what they were doing. Germania's invasion of Albion was underway. Prince Wales had sent many of his forces to intercept Germania's airships before they could land on the floating continent, they used a multitude of ballista's, cannons, mages, and whatever was left of their aerial forces to combat them.
Unfortunately, Prince Wales and his commanders had been anticipating an attack by Gallia first, and thus were caught somewhat off guard by the abrupt hostility by Germania, especially since they had all figured that the country would invade Tristain first.
Albion's forces held off the first few groups of airships, but soon enough they were forced to flee from their positions once the airships got into range to begin firing back. The many fire mages and cannons aboard the ships proved their worth, hammering all the defensive positions the Albion forces were hiding in.
A couple keeps were utterly decimated by this, and not even hastily constructed magical defences could protect them for long. Germania were employing enchanted cannon balls that had been specifically designed to breach through matearial. These were intended to be used against enemy airships, but turned out to be just as effective against keeps, castles, and other fortifications.
Soon enough, despite Albion's efforts to keep them out, Germania had secured itself a foothold on the edge of the floating continent, allowing it to quickly mass its many troops there. Albion's army of monsters were on the march towards it, but the undisciplined and frankly self-destructive army was as slow to move as it was to react.
By the time Princess Henrietta had been returned to her country, Germania had built many fortifications and begun raiding nearby villages to supply their army further. All in all, Albion was on the backfoot in this conflict, with little to no leverage outside of having the obvious home and defensive advantages.
Albion hadn't even started to recover from the most recent civil war, so against a country as large and powerful as Germania, their odds weren't good at all.
Elsewhere, Gallia had also begun its invasion on Tristian. It's army easily snatching up the keeps and castles on Tristain's western border. Villages were subsumed, men were drafted, women forced into prostitution for the soldiers to keep their children and families fed. While Gallia's army was pretty disciplined as a whole, there were many instances of villages being razed, raped, and destroyed by soldiers in the throughs of battle. Specifically, these were the villages which attempts to resist Gallia's control.
The commanders of Gallia's army didn't care all that much for the fate of those who resisted them either, so the soldiers were given a light slap on the wrist afterwards with little to no actual punishment.
Survivors of these massacres escaped to other nearby villages, and the message was quite clear. Resist Gallia and suffer. It was this combined with Tristain's lacking military response that had many villages kneel towards the foreign country, despite having belonged to Tristain for many, many years.
Tristain's military had always been poor compared to its neighbouring countries, but their presence, plus the Magical Academy, plus the presence of Romalia had usually kept them safe. But now, after a civil war in its borders and in its only ally, Albion's land, things were quite dire.
Tristain's military eventually began setting up defences to the west, but it was far too late to properly prepare for the tidal wave that was Gallia's forces. What was the reason for this slow reaction though? This was mainly due to the kidnapping of Henrietta, who was obvious unable to command her forces, leaving her rather witless subordinates to do it in her stead.
Fortunately, not all was going badly for Tristain. King Joseph was utilising Sheffield as a spy for most of war, so to have her suddenly go silent after attempting to acquire an artifact held by the enemy Void Mage was anger inducing to the man. Not because of the loss of his Familiar, but because he now no longer held the information advantage.
Gallia's army stopped their progress almost immediately, now that the commanders lacked the information Sheffield was giving out, they'd have to actually use their minds now. Using actual tactics instead of having a comprehensive list on the opponents weaknesses.
And now that Henrietta was back in command, Tristain had been unified under her, with all of her forces being stationed West, despite Germania still being a threat. Still, there wasn't anything to be done about it. If Germania decided to invade at the same time as Gallia, Tristain would die regardless of what she did. And now, even the choice of marrying the Germania Emperor was lost to her.
Honestly, she was beginning to learn towards using the tactics that General Gramont had employed, using the students in the magical academy as hostages... Unfortunately, doing that would lose the respect of most of her subjects, especially after she'd cut down thousands of her own men stopping them from attacking the Academy... That's not even mentioning Headmaster Osmond.
With Louise sent off to Romalia to learn under the Pope, there was no hope for Tristain. But, the Princess was determined to go down with her ship. It's what a respectable ruler should do, her mother, the Queen had already fled to one of her properties in Romalia, so Henrietta was determined to prove that she deserved her position, even in death.
Now, if only she could remove whatever mind control spell was cast on Agnes, maybe she could die without regrets...
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