Warlord: King of All Clans

To the north of Earl Grant's territory, the Riverbend Legion was heading north along the road to the city of Asgard in Earl Beowulf's territory.

Teams of musketeers marched in an orderly manner, wearing only standard military uniforms, with their armor and shields concentrated on the baggage wagons.

Although they were still carrying heavy flintlock rifles and individual backpacks, the dozens of kilograms of weight were almost nothing to the strong Northern regular soldiers.

Next to them were baggage wagons, which slowly passed the infantry ranks and headed to the designated camp ahead to wait.

The avenue here is the main road in the territory operated by the Beboos family for a hundred years. Although it is not hardened, it is wide enough for three carriages to run side by side.

Because of the heavy rain in spring, the roads were muddy, so the Mobile Musketeer Regiment of Hewan became the pioneers in opening the way. They laid a large amount of gravel and sleepers along the way to fill the muddiest and bumpy sections.

If the road is not repaired, the First Artillery Regiment behind will not be able to deliver various types of artillery to the battlefield.

At this time, the engineering training of the River Bend Infantry showed results, and the terrifying construction power made Grant, who was accompanying him, secretly amazed.

Last month, Leo wrote to say that he wanted to take the main road to the north, and Grant agreed without thinking. Even though his territory was in ruins and short of people, he still recruited 3,000 laborers to repair the main road to the north in advance.

By the time Leo's army arrived, the road repair progress of the 3,000 civilians was less than one-third.

But the 1,500 musketeers from Hewan, riding fast horses and carrying engineering shovels, made the mud road look brand new in half the time it took 3,000 laborers.

The main force was now heading north, carrying six extremely heavy carriages and two-wheeled horse-drawn artillery weighing two to three thousand pounds, and not a single vehicle was damaged by the road conditions.

Grant and Leo stood side by side on the hill, watching the marching teams of infantry, and couldn't help but praise: "Your musketeers from the river bend are truly elite troops rarely seen in the world."

Leo smiled slightly. According to the traditional Northern infantry, more than half of these so-called elite soldiers were actually recruits only three years old.

But because Riverbend abandoned the traditional lord conscription system and switched to a standing army recruitment system, the training time of these new recruits in three years was longer than the ten years of conscripts in other earls.

Moreover, Leo is trained according to the standards of modern infantry. Every reserve recruit must pass three tests in shooting, engineering and assassination before he can enter the first and second main infantry regiments. Otherwise, he can only serve in the third and fourth infantry regiments to defend and patrol the territory and will not have the opportunity to fight abroad.

A qualified Hewan Elite Musketeer can cooperate with teammates to form a line gun formation at a distance and conduct musket rounds to provide firepower. He can also form a bayonet gun formation at close range to resist cavalry and close combat.

During marches and stationings, they can also transform into engineers to quickly repair roads, dig trenches, and build military camps.

Because it is a recruitment system rather than a conscription system, every soldier going to the battlefield volunteers to do so in order to make a fortune and achieve success, and their morale is much higher than that of conscripts who are forced to fight.

Leo has focused most of his energy on building the army in Hewan. If the troops he has are still unable to create a generational gap, he will not frequently pull them out to fight.

Grant watched for a while and discovered another phenomenon that was easy to overlook. "How can your carriage in Hewan go so fast?"

Although this road has been roughly repaired so that carriages will not overturn, the large amount of rubble makes the surface uneven.

Under normal circumstances, a fully loaded four-wheeled carriage can only move cautiously on this kind of road, and its speed is not much faster than that of the infantry marching on foot.

However, the carriages at Hewan were several times faster than the infantry. The wheels turned so fast that they left the infantry behind in the blink of an eye.

The bearings of the Northern carriages are all mortise and tenon bearings, which are just a wooden rod inserted into the iron ring in the center of the wheel. If they are slightly loaded or lack lubrication, they will squeak.

On such a bumpy road, if the carriage was fully loaded with goods and drove too fast, the bearings would break accidentally and the whole carriage would be paralyzed.

Therefore, the empire's merchants and caravan drivers all worked part-time as carpenters so that they could repair their carriages anytime and anywhere.

Seeing that Grant noticed it, Leo did not hide it and explained, "It's an iron axle and steel ball bearings."

"Iron axles and steel ball bearings?" Grant did not ask much, but he took note of it in his heart and planned to ask the alchemist to study it quickly.

The steel ball bearings on the iron axles of the Riverbend carriages are all new products created after the rotary refining furnace was built.

Before steam locomotives came into use, how to increase the transport capacity of horse-drawn carriages was always the most urgent need of the Hewan mining and transportation industries.

The friction of traditional carriage bearings is very large, and even with the help of wooden tracks, the cargo capacity of the carriage is difficult to increase much.

Apart from increasing the number of draft horses, the only other option is to optimize the carriage structure.

But without high-quality steel, the cost of ball bearings and iron axles would be comparable to plate armor, making mass production impossible.

Ball bearings were an idea that the Empire had conceived decades ago, and Leo had long since listed them as a research target.

The tiny bearings are necessary parts in almost all industrial machinery and equipment. Generators, motors, and oil engines cannot avoid them.

A craftsman from Hewan Mining improved the original structure and then used Hewan's advanced metallurgical technology to produce the first ball bearing that could be mass-produced.

Although these ball bearings are expensive and have low production, and cannot be distributed to the public for the time being, they are sufficient for use by the mining industry and the military in Hewan.

In order to encourage invention, Leo specially asked someone to help the mining craftsman to apply for a patent for the ball bearing.

In addition to the patent reward of twenty gold coins issued by the Lord's Mansion, any workshop in the river bend will give him one copper coin for each ball bearing produced.

As for Grant's desire to imitate it, Leo didn't mind at all. In the industrially backward North, except for the extraordinary alchemists who could make round steel balls in the laboratory, the irregular cast iron beads made by ordinary blacksmith shops could not meet the minimum requirements of ball bearings.

So when Leo saw that he was silent, he said directly: "Second brother, don't worry, wait until our bearing workshop in Hewan is expanded next year, and I will sell a batch to you as soon as possible."

There was a hint of helplessness in Grant's eyes. How could he not be anxious?

The Earldom of River Bay in the west invents a new invention every day, and the Earldom of Kurolov in the east imitates a new invention every day. How can his small Earldom of Grant not be anxious when it is stuck in the middle?

But he had nothing else to say, so he could only nod and thank him.

Leo looked at the baggage train at the river bend going away, feeling a little regretful. Although today's carriages have iron axles and ball bearings, the wheels are still iron-clad wooden wheels with almost no shock absorption, still at the level of ancient carriages.

However, Fraser's rubber research progress was slow, and the industrial production of vulcanized rubber had not yet been completed.

When finished rubber appears one day, the wheels of the carriages in Hewan will be wrapped with a circle of vulcanized rubber, and their speed and durability will be doubled.