Capítulo 1938: Chapter 1931: The Disintegration Policy
After Cheng Ziang finished speaking, the group of staff officers were left speechless. Although they knew he would side with the Commander, his reasoning left no grounds for rebuttal.
But, is the nature of war really like this?
In everyone’s impression, war should be the clash of steel and blood. Even when there are occasional strategic maneuvers, they should be re trifles on the battlefield, not the mainstay.
Luo’er and Cheng Ziang, these two military figureheads, always had various bizarre plans in their heads that were hard to comprehend.
If prisoners of war could be mobilized as soldiers, why call them prisoners then? Prisoners of war should be kept in POW camps; that is the ideal situation.
In fact, the staff officers’ confusion largely stemd from their incomplete understanding of the war as a whole and their partial grasp of battlefield deploynt.
In Luo’er and Cheng Ziang’s plan, the outermost defense line was dispensable, requiring only symbolic resistance to ensure that the rear artillery could cover the massed enemy forces. This would suffice.
Therefore, even supplenting the outer defense line with Aud Army prisoners as combat forces would not significantly change the overall battlefield situation.
Because even if the outer line fell, Lipei’s defense system still had at least two more lines to resist, capable of withstanding such losses.
It was precisely for this reason that Luo’er proposed such a bold plan.
Because, in his view, if those Aud Army prisoners could persuade their own to defect and disarm, that would be ideal. Even if not, or even if these prisoners betrayed, at worst it would lead to the fall of the first line of defense, which wouldn’t significantly impact the overall situation.
This plan could be described as using the smallest defense line to attempt to achieve the greatest victory. If successful, the gains would be substantial. If it failed, the losses would remain controllable.
Cheng Ziang realized Luo’er’s thoughts, which is why he expressed his views in front of a group of staff officers.
The staff officers naturally didn’t have as much influence as the Commander alone, coupled with the Chief chiming in, so the plan was easily approved without opposition.
In fact, sotis Luo’er also felt that his staff officers were either defeatists, reckless adventurers, or ramblers. In short, they seldom provided effective plans.
What might seem like a clever plan to the staff often appeared childish and laughably naive to Luo’er.
It seed that the staff needed so mbers from the Advance Team, preferably those who had executed missions for more than two years.
Otherwise, the staff would easily harbor unrealistic fantasies about the Otherworld, leading to erroneous judgnts and plans.
The plans proposed by Luo’er were either summaries of world patterns, insights into human nature, or interpretations of policies. So he always hit the right note at the right ti, which was why he was entrusted with critical responsibilities.
As for the staff, they were either influenced by negative perceptions of reality or impractical fantasies. Applying Earth’s behavior formulas to the Otherworld was obviously problematic.
With Luo’er’s command, the Headquarters started recruiting the Aud Army prisoners in the POW camp.
Of course, simply relying on policy superiority wasn’t enough to attract people. Therefore, Lipei’s Headquarters proposed high-wage hiring to recruit Aud Army prisoners willing to go to the front line as rcenaries.
The main task of these Aud Army rcenaries was to persuade surrenders on the front lines. Lipei’s Headquarters was exceedingly generous in this regard.
They declared that as long as soone could arrange the surrender of an Aud Army soldier, the recruiter would receive a 5,000-yuan reward, and the surrendering soldier would get 2,000 yuan.
Considering that the average salary for Aud Army soldiers was only seven or eight hundred, and officers barely exceeded a thousand, this remuneration was clearly substantial for Aud Army prisoners.
For a while, these Aud Army prisoners eagerly signed up, willing to advance to the front line to persuade their comrades to join the king’s forces.
The recruited Aud Army prisoners received a uniform, a bulletproof vest, and an AK assault rifle, and were then organized and dispatched to the front line.
Within the first two days of recruitnt, Lipei had enlisted over three thousand Aud Army rcenaries, incorporating them into the rcenary corps and deploying them to the first line of defense.
The salary for these Aud Army rcenaries was three hundred per day, with additional surrendering bonuses. Additionally, Lipei’s Headquarters offered favorable policies whereby recruiting more than ten at once earned a bonus of a thousand yuan on top of the regular surrender fee.
Recruiting over twenty garnered an extra two thousand, with no upper limit.
During this period, the Lipei Defense Army temporarily halted artillery suppression to allow these Aud Army rcenaries room to operate.
As for the rcenaries deployed at the first line of defense, Lipei’s Headquarters didn’t shortchange them. Instead, they stated that so long as they cooperated with the Aud Army rcenaries in recruiting, they could earn so rewards, though not substantial.
Of course, the surrender policy equally applied to them. This ant these rcenaries could personally attempt to persuade Aud Army surrenders instead of standing idly by.
For a ti, the soldiers on the first line of defense were in chaos. Tens of thousands of Aud Army troops confronted just a few thousand rcenaries and militian.
Yet, these few thousands were remarkably proactive; every night, people would sneak into the Aud Army positions, preaching the Lipei army’s policies and showcasing the generous rewards, stirring the hearts of many Aud Army soldiers.
The main difference between modern and feudal armies is that every modern soldier knows why they fight, and thus, aren’t easily tempted by profit.
In contrast, most feudal soldiers lack the concept of fighting for the nation; to them, being a soldier is rely a job.
No matter how lavishly His Majesty extolled the Aud Empire, the fighting spirit of the lower-tier soldiers was weak. This grand narrative did little to move soldiers fighting for pay.
Conversely, Lipei demonstrated generosity, discussing principles but emphasizing profits more. They clearly laid out what benefits an Aud Army soldier could gain by complying.
Driven by such incentives, the Aud Army inevitably suffered internal unrest. On the first day of persuasion efforts, over a thousand Aud Army soldiers defected and surrendered en masse at the Lipei Defense Army’s positions, aiming to enter the POW camp.
Luo’er did so calculations; even taking into account various surrender expenses, it was still far cheaper than actual warfare, as fighting was exceedingly costly.
This news infuriated Brolan, who imdiately issued the strictest decrees: any detected betrayal would be grounds for execution.
Additionally, under Brolan’s orders, the Aud Army began launching new offensives against Lipei’s outer defenses.
However, the battle results were shocking. The persuading Aud Army rcenaries resisted valiantly, repelling dozens of charges.
What alard Brolan most was that the Aud Army’s assault resulted in over five thousand losses. Only less than a thousand were casualties; the rest used the attack as a pretext to collectively defect to the outer line and surrender.
This included nurous officers who, prior to the attack, had prearranged with the defending Aud Army rcenaries to leave an opening, through which they entered and imdiately surrendered in an orderly line into the POW camp.
Under the fierce artillery bombardnt of the Lipei army, the Aud Army’s assault sustained heavy losses and eventually retreated once more.
As soldiers continued to dwindle and the attacks yielded no results, Brolan found himself mired in doubt.
In essence, he wasn’t the highest officer of the Aud Army’s Western Corps and lacked the authority to command a full-scale offensive, only able to order his own corps into battle.
The true commander of the Western Corps, Oklo Laf, hid far in the rear and had no desire to break off completely with the Lipei personnel, hesitating on both offense and retreating. This was the direct reason why the Aud Army, numbering in the tens of thousands, had been stalemated for days with only a few thousand opposing them.
Lipei’s high command accurately grasped the psychology of both the Aud officers and soldiers, allowing them to administer suitable redies.
The Aud Army was defeated not by profit, but rather by the failure of its public opinion warfare. Because the Aud Army’s propaganda was too weak, it enabled Lipei Defense Army’s generous POW policy to perate the entire Aud Army.
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