King of German Mercenaries

After solving some reform problems of official institutions, Marin turned his attention to the army and decided to restructure the army...

Frankly speaking, the size of the regular standing army Marin currently retains is 10,000, which is arrogant among the European counties. Even most principalities do not have such a scale. Even some kingdoms do not usually have a standing army of 10,000. For example, in the Kingdom of Portugal, there are usually only five or six thousand army standing troops. Only in time of war will it be temporarily expanded.

Not only that, in addition to the regular standing army of 10,000, East Frisian currently retains 7,000 reserve troops. Usually during the slack season, the 7,000 reserve troops often gather for training, and they never relax for a moment.

The combined size of the 17,000-strong army, coupled with the power of defeating the more than 20,000-strong army of Saxony, made the neighboring countries of East Friesland feel very alarmed.

As a result, many vassal states close to East Frisland have put forward their opinions to the Imperial Parliament, asking Marin to disband the huge standing army, so that the neighbors can "relieve". After all, a small country with a size of 3,000 square kilometers and 10,000 standing troops and 7,000 second-line troops is really scary.

Coincidentally, when Marin was carrying out institutional reforms, the Worms Imperial Council sent an official letter asking Marin not to keep so many standing troops in peacetime to avoid misunderstandings.

Although Marin was not afraid of the Imperial Council, after thinking about it, he did not want to offend the Imperial Council. You know, the Reichstag is the collective will of the princes of all Germany. Although the emperor also has his own mouthpiece in it, he does not have the upper hand.

The most important thing is that even if Maximilian I wanted to have a voice in the imperial parliament, he needed to unite many nobles of the Saxon and Swabian families in order to achieve his goal.

But now, Saxony and Marin have long been feuding. Even if the emperor wanted to show solidarity with Marin at the Imperial Diet, he could not get the support of the Saxon nobles. Moreover, in order to appease the Saxon nobles and win their support, most of the emperor's forces abstained from voting on this resolution to show their neutral position between the Saxon nobles and Marin.

The emperor had all abstained from voting, and most of the princes were the emperor's opponents, so the resolution was passed easily...

Although Marin obtained the legal status of the county, he has never been able to send his legal representative in the Imperial Parliament. As for the reason, it is also very simple - most of the members of the Imperial Parliament do not agree.

The princes knew very well that Marin belonged to the emperor's faction. If it is absorbed into the Imperial Council, it is equivalent to adding one more vote to the emperor. Thus, although the Reichstag did not veto Marin's will to become an Imperial Count, it rejected the counties of East Frisland as a full member of the Imperials. Therefore, for this decision, Marin also passively accepted it without knowing it in advance. Even if the emperor sent someone to tell him the news in advance, it would not help. Because, when the imperial parliament quarreled, he didn't know it...

Marin could also brutally reject the Imperial Council's decision, but that would come at a price. Although it is very unlikely that the member states of the Imperial Council will unite to fight Marin, Marin still does not want to see such a thing happen. And, even if not beaten by a gang, Marin worries about financial sanctions. So, Marin had to make a compromise.

However, Marin was not willing to disband the 10,000 regular army that had just been trained and only keep a small part. After all, it is easy to disband the army, but it is difficult to regroup the elite soldiers.

After all, as a veteran with major battle experience, it is very popular in this war-torn era. The front foot Marin disbanded the veterans, and there may be other forces in the back foot to win over these veterans...

Moreover, these veterans have received Marin's modern military training. Once they leave and are hired away, the training methods in the Marin army will also spread on a large scale.

At that time, everyone has modernized, how can Marin maintain the military advantage? Even though the Spaniards and Teutons came to study the "Marin phalanx", Marin only explained the phalanx to them in detail, but did not stress to them the importance of modernized military training. Therefore, what they learned was mainly the use of the Spanish square, rather than the complete set.

Therefore, in any case, Marin was unwilling to disband most of the soldiers. Especially those smart officers, Marin is even more reluctant to lose.

Those veterans were drawn in, and they might not understand the importance of modernizing military discipline. But those officers were lured away, and even if they didn't understand the truth, they were able to perfectly replicate the modernized military training.

The problem is that Marin now has to keep all his subordinates on the one hand, and on the other hand, he has to explain something to the Imperial Parliament on the surface...

So, after thinking hard, Marin finally came up with a way to fool the Imperial Council...

That is, forming a company and digesting most of the soldiers. Change their identities from regular soldiers on the bright side to mercenaries under the company...

This trick, of course, was learned from the East India Company of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. These two East India companies were both pioneers in the colonization of the East by the two countries. In name, neither belongs to the official institutions of the two countries, but private institutions.

However, the East India Company of these two countries has a large number of troops. The number of mercenaries who ruled India in the later period of the British East India Company reached an astonishing 20,000 to 300,000 people. The number of mercenaries of the Dutch East India Company was more than 10,000.

Therefore, Marin's plan is to transfer most of the "organizational relationships" of the soldiers to this company, so that the number of the standing army of the East Frisian Country will be reduced to 2 square formations, with a total of 2,500 people. . The other 7,500 people, on the bright side, have become private company armed forces...

The company's name, Marin, has long since been plagiarized -- Blackwater. Its logo also follows the black bear's paw of the Blackwater Company in the early days...

After everything was done, Marin signed an order to set up a private armed contracting company, the Blackwater Company, and transferred the relationship of 7,500 soldiers to the company. Of course, their titles and fiefs in the counties of East Friesland were all reserved. It's just that when they are external, they claim to be employees of the Blackwater Company. Internally, nothing has really changed.

As for the company's shareholders, Marin randomly fabricated several names and registered them. But in essence, several major shareholders are their own trumpet aliases. In addition, several senior generals such as Schwartz and Frenzberg also each hold 1% of the company's dry shares. They only have the right to dividends, and they cannot cash out and have no right to speak.

As for the five major shareholders, in addition to Marin's disclosed real name and the other four "trumpets", Marin chose four puppets as representatives, who pretended to participate in the meeting and pretended to be shareholders. But in essence, the only job of these four so-called "shareholders" when participating in the general meeting of shareholders is to raise their hands to approve all decisions made by the largest shareholder, Marin, and then applaud...

Then, Marin divided the army. Schwartz remained a senior general of the East Frisian army, and was promoted to the number one general of the army, responsible for commanding the retained standing army of 2,500. Frenzberg, who was originally as famous as Schwartz, was arranged by Marin to join the Blackwater Company as the head of the Blackwater Company and manage the 7,500 people. At the same time, Franzberg's titles and fiefs in East Friesland remain unaffected.

After fiddling with everything, Marin officially announced to the public that 7,500 troops were cut off, and only 2,500 regular troops were retained, that is, two phalanxes...

But the neighboring countries were not finished yet. Three days later, Marin announced the establishment of the "Blackwater" mercenary company, taking over the 7,500 East Frisian Army that had been abolished. And the largest shareholder of Blackwater is Marin, Count of East Frisian...

This time, everyone can see that Marin has not dismantled the army at all. However, in order to deal with the censure of the Imperial Council on the surface, the command of the army was handed over from the left hand to the right hand.

However, there is nothing wrong with this hand, at least on the surface. Because, Marin did accept the opinion of the Imperial Council on the surface. Those 7,500 people are indeed not regular troops. It's just that they still secretly accept Marin's command...

So, despite the fire. The big bosses of the Imperial Council, but they can't pick out any reason for Marin on the bright side. You know, on the bright side, Marin only holds 40% of the shares of Blackwater Company, and does not have an absolute controlling stake of 51%. Therefore, on the surface, it can also be said that Marin lost absolute control over the 7,500 soldiers.

Moreover, simple medieval Europeans do not know that the other four major shareholders are actually puppets found by Marin. They naively thought that there were really four rich people from East Friesland who had invested in the company...

After the establishment of the Blackwater Company, as the company's chief general, Frenzberg took over the company's first business - assisting the regular army of East Frisian Country, defending the border...

Yes, it is clear that they will continue to play the role of the army of the Counties of East Friesland. The salary is also the same as before. It's just that, on the surface, these mercenaries are not the regular army of East Frisian...

The surrounding countries that were hostile to the Counties of East Friesland, such as Saxony and Oldenburg, almost got their noses crooked. Their spies, across the border, saw most of the East Frisian barracks where three golden eagle flags (Brock family flags) with three crossed hats each had been hung, but the flags were replaced by black bears The flag of the Blackwater Corporation in the palm of the hand. But in fact, their army did not mobilize at all, just changed the flag.