I Am Louis XIV

The Duke of Orleans quickly forgot about Gemma who had left. He had too many things to deal with. There were always different factions among the Catalans. There are just as many people who are pro-French, neutral and even want to be independent. They are like the princes in the Middle Ages, reluctantly gathered to the monarch of money, and offered their knights and soldiers. Now the duke wants to integrate them, otherwise once they face the regular Spanish army, they will still be defeated. There is only one way to defeat.

While the kings of France began to improve, add, and equip thermal weapons on a large scale, the Spaniards were not far behind - like other powerful countries, they collected war taxes from the people, poll taxes and more in various names. Taxation, and then spending the money on muskets, cannons, and soldiers is a routine and must be done, and there is no need to be too harsh.

But for the Catalan rebel army, lack of armaments (even need to use farm tools to make up for it), chaotic discipline, lack of planning and tactics, they are like Sisyphus in hell—the one who The arrogant king had tested the gods in a cruel way, and the result was, as the gods condemned, to push a huge stone ball up a long slope in hell forever.

The slope is long and the stone ball is heavy, but this is not the most desperate thing. The most desperate thing is that every time he pushes the stone ball to the top, the stone ball will roll down from the top without a foothold, and he can only return to the original point. The tedious labor labor begins again.

Catalan rebellion always seems to be like this too, unbearable, riot, crushed, intolerable, riot, crushed... The cycle seems to have always been like this since the double kings - the Duke of Orleans was able to leap from The identity of the hostage was promoted to a person with the right to speak, also because he gave these people a glimmer of hope.

Open the map of the Roussillon region on the desktop, nailed with many small nails, each nail represents a rebel team that echoes Roussillon, but as many nails are nailed, how many nails will be taken down in a few days , the duke listened carefully to the words of those representatives, only to find that they started the riot in units of a village, a town, or even a few settlements, but there was not much connection between them, like the mistake that occurred during the Roussillon riot. There are more than one place, and although they are both Catalans, they attack each other because of personal hatred-so they are independent, and of course it is easy for the Spanish army to clean them up.

This kind of situation also happened in the Duke's Catalan army, but the Duke thought he could persuade them to keep their guns on the same line, at least at this time. The problem is that most of these so-called soldiers are farmers and craftsmen In other words, they may only have taken up weapons for a few months, and only a few of them have worked as mercenaries, but even if they have been mercenaries, they have no discipline and cannot understand complicated orders.

The Duke of Orleans used a board of chess pieces as a model of a soldier, and Maozai tilted his head and looked at it—since he was the king hundreds of years ago, he must also be a brave general, and he actually watched it with relish.

"Are you planning to use skirmishers?" Cat Zai asked. If he didn't look up, the voice he made was very consistent with the appearance of the parents of Vanjoy, that is, males between youth and prime.

The concept of stragglers mentioned by Theodric was proposed by the Grand Condé and Viscount Turenne in the Royal Military Academy of France in recent years. To put it simply, the so-called straggler tactics in the past were not trained in formation Civilians who are difficult to control and restrain, and unable to grasp the results of the battle, often use tactics that cannot be called tactics, or to put it more bluntly, is to push a group of people who have no war literacy onto the battlefield and let them play freely.

Before Louis XIV, because muskets still needed to be fired with matchlocks, in order to ensure firepower, soldiers had to be arranged in neat rows of four to five rows, sometimes as many as seven to eight rows, and fired continuously one after the other. Suppression of the enemy—when people of later generations saw this scene of rows of soldiers advancing, shooting, and falling down in the white smoke, they would feel a little weird and completely incomprehensible. In cognition, this tactic is too stupid, it is simply collective suicide.

But in this era, people highly respect this tactic, because the lethality of muskets is too small. If the bullets are not dense enough, one or two people shoot separately, and the damage caused to an army is minimal. Only some of the most unfortunate Only the most unlucky ghosts will be injured or killed in this attack method.

This is the problem facing the Catalans. When the Spanish army rolled over like an iron wall, the weak force that the few stragglers could exert had no effect.

It’s not that they don’t want to be trained like a real army—under the sharp eyes of officials and police, it’s impossible for the Catalans to blatantly form such a team, let alone they can’t support it—the Duke of Orleans short In just a few days, tens of thousands of livres were invested in order to maintain and implement his ideas.

After Louis XIV, because of the flintlock guns, under the attempts of the generals, the original horizontal formations became linear formations. In fact, it was because of the fast and powerful firing speed of the flintlock guns that the commander There is no need to equip too many ranks to ensure firepower, so the previous multiple ranks have been changed to the current three or four ranks, but the artillery breaks through or defeats at the front, the musket ranks are behind, and the cavalry on both sides maneuvers. changing.

The Duke of Orleans has personally visited those Catalan soldiers. It is not surprising, but also a bit regretful, that there are only a handful of them who have received military training, although when it comes to courage, there is no shortage.

So he had an idea. This idea is not new. His elder brother has consciously trained some courageous and capable soldiers in the past few years, letting them form a team alone. They can be used as skirmishers on the battlefield, but not The kind of stragglers who have no combat awareness and concept, but keen ingenuity, can catch fleeting fighters even when there is no clear order.

The Duke plans to divide the Catalans into two groups, one group is soldiers who have received long-term knight training like Gemma's father and brother, and the other group is ordinary civilians who will be strictly controlled. Trained in the manner of the French, that is, the soldiers in the linear formation, the former, the duke would let them out, like a pack of ferocious hounds, and let them hunt for themselves.

He wasn't sure whether to place the skirmishers on the sides or the front of the line.

"Front, both sides." Theodric, who once attended the Military Academy in the form of a kitten, said, "Anyway, you don't have cavalry now, small artillery, and then skirmishers, which can also paralyze the eyes and ears of the opponent commander, and then go to the military academy." It's the flintlock line."

"You can try it," said the Duke. "It's a pity that there are no cavalry."

"It would be great if we could choose the battlefield," Theodric said. "Henry made the Russians suffer a lot before." He was talking about the Polish Crown Prince Henry who made Karsama overnight The matter of Zeguo. In places where the ground is soft or even bad, the cavalry is not an advantage but a disadvantage, but not to mention that there are too many battlefields here, and the Spaniards will not give them a choice.

"By the way, when is your brother going to officially announce his second son's ownership of Spain?"

"If there are no mistakes, it will be soon." The Duke said, and then pressed his forehead wearily.

———————

Everyone knows that whether it is the French King Louis XIV who announced that his second son Charles has the right to inherit the Spanish throne, or the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I announced that his eldest son Philip has the right to inherit the Spanish throne. It must be the beginning of a war no less than the Hundred Years' War.

But the two sides wrestled in secret for a long time, and finally the Sun King Louis XIV officially opened the prelude to the battle for the succession of the Spanish throne. On the first day of Lent in 1680, Louis XIV summoned all officials, ministers and The general, as well as the envoys of various countries, announced in the Jupiter Hall in Versailles that his second son, Charles, would be King of Spain as Carlos III!

Even though people had expected this news, they couldn't help being shocked by it.

Immediately afterwards, Louis XIV issued a decree requiring the ministers, officials and princes of the courts of Madrid and Toledo in Spain to swear allegiance to their new king, and the young Carlos II will be escorted by his uncle , to Madrid, where the coronation took place in the cathedral.

Such a public declaration must have aroused loud opposition from the princes of the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian envoys, but at this time, how could the voice of opposition overwhelm the voice of cheering? The people in Paris and Versailles celebrated almost all night long, and the fireworks illuminated The black sky and the embarrassing faces of the Spanish envoys, some of them were pro-French and some were anti-French, but no one cared about their thoughts.

The attitude of Louis XIV is obvious. After all, the order to order the Spanish courts in Madrid and Toledo to bow to his second son is time-limited and extremely urgent. They hardly have time to think about it. The French king only wants to get Answer: yes, or no!

At the same time, the two fleets in the port of Marseilles headed south under the cover of night.

Not far from Marseilles is Perpirion, and down from Perpirion is Barcelona. The key to these two most important cities in Catalonia is that they are port cities, and the sea is what brings the crisis now—unlike when Louis XIV attacked the Netherlands, France now has a total of 300 ships The remaining ships, even though part of them have been borrowed by the Duke of Colonna to deal with the threat posed by the Ottoman Turks, and there are more ships lying across the Strait of Calais to deal with the sharp edge of the British, the remaining ships are still enough to serve as the Duke of Orleans. killer feature.

Today, the artillery on these ships can directly bombard the walls of Perpyrian and Barcelona from the sea.

Although he only showed up at the banquet for a short time, Louis hugged his young son who was already tired and drowsy, and walked to his suite. Queen Teresa watched worriedly, "There is nothing to worry about," Louis smiled and said, "Didn't I hug little Louis?" Several of his sons had different biological mothers, but the king always treated these children equally, even Mrs. Montespan's son Auguste. In this way, he has hugged them before, and he may be a little more skilled than these noble girls.

It was little Louis on the side who couldn't help but scratched his face shyly. He still vaguely remembered the feeling of being held in his father's arms, and his mood was complicated.

Sure enough, even though he was carried into the bedroom by his father, Charles still did not wake up. The maid gathered the little prince, no, it should be said, the King of Spain to the bathroom. In the small hall, only His Majesty the King, the Queen and the Crown Prince, and Bontang, who was never far from him--it was he who drove off the extra squires and maids.

Louis first got rid of the heavy coat under the service of the queen. After adding layers of gold and silver embroidery and inlaid with thousands of gems and diamonds, any coat would become a set of shining armor. Louis signaled to the king The prince also took off his coat, and the queen went into the small room and changed into a more comfortable robe. The three of them sat in front of the fireplace like an ordinary family. At this time, Versailles was still a little cold at night, and Bontang brought hot tea with chocolate.

Louis pushed the chocolate towards Teresa, Teresa liked it, but everything she ate today tasted like wax - after tonight, everything is like an arrow, and there is no room for redemption .

"Don't worry, mother, father won't send my brother to Spain right now." Little Louis comforted her by saying that he is also a tall young man, and he is about to marry the Portuguese princess, but it seems that their wedding may be accompanied by fireworks With gunpowder. But he didn't care, he was still a little excited, he never doubted that his father would win again, he just remembered that his younger brother would soon leave France, leave his father and elder brother, and go to a strange and hostile place, and he would do the same Worrying.

"I'm not worried about this," Teresa said, "Of course I will trust my Majesty." She smiled: "It's just a little emotional. She is the least favored of Philip IV's children, At the beginning, her father was so cold that he delayed or deliberately took away her dowry. Although this could be said to be in Louis's arms, he never thought about how difficult it would be for a foreign queen without a dowry to live in the Louvre.

The king's marriage is also a political contract. If the dowry never arrives, the French can use this as a reason to deny the legitimacy of the marriage.

But her father, Philip IV, probably did not expect that the half a million livres he thought he could afford would be repaid with the whole of Spain in the end.