Drake was a little desperate.

He faces an opponent who is different from all the battles in the past.

Just as he didn't understand why Liu Ruguo could not consider finance and recruit soldiers endlessly, but he could not even afford the military pay of the nobles.

Strictly speaking, Drake was not leading a rebel army that broke out in rebellion, on the contrary, they should be a counter-insurgency force.

Where can the rebels lead the military pay? Drake is the only one. Every month, he has to provide nearly two thousand pounds of military pay to nobles, soldiers and mercenaries, and spend another three thousand pounds on baggage and logistics.

This is based on the support provided by Scotland.

Even a whole Kingdom of England in the past could not support two years. Their annual fiscal revenue, parliamentary allowances, royal territories, tariffs and feudal income combined were less than 250,000 pounds, not to mention the current Drake who is hard to support.

He had no money at all.

If you have no money, but you still have to continue the war, you can only carry forward the fine traditions of the Elizabethan era, sell church and royal land, force loans, sell official positions and privileges on a large scale in exchange for money.

This method was very useful at first. The nobles who followed the north lost their land. They could first loot the land to the south, and then immediately auctioned or banned the land at a discount.

If there is no land, auction it in advance, land is settled and paid directly. If there is also a large amount of funds can be easily obtained by selling mines to new nobles, merchants, salt farms, or monopoly operating power to a certain area.

In this way, Drake doesn't need to worry about military forces, and these nobles will get things done.

But when the one-sided attack turned into repeated tug-of-war, from the second time they captured a certain piece of land, these lands had been enthroned and suffered multiple robberies, which could not be exchanged for valuable wealth, the capital chain obtained by this method was broken.

Newly enfeoffed land, new trade routes for sale, newly awarded titles and new sales monopoly all require a stable political environment to continuously produce value.

In fact, this was not a big blow to Drake, he could survive it.

Even if he bit his teeth, he would have to stand until Liu Ruguo couldn't stand it.

Until I knew that Liu Ruguo was standing opposite, Shuntian'an Minyi Army had no military pay at all.

The most shocking thing in the world is that Drake has always hoped that his opponent would fail on a problem that was never a problem.

When the truth is revealed, he is on the verge of collapse.

I always thought that everyone spent so much money, and I always had Scottish support, but I didn’t expect you to spend money at all!

Perhaps Drake could withstand it for two years before knowing this, but after understanding it, Drake suddenly had no hope of continuing to withstand it. Instead, he spent money to mobilize the nobles, serfs and residents of the original city to build a large bastion in the river north of the city that was used as the second line of defense.

Almost success or failure is a one-off.

Power is a game of cooperation. For Drake at this moment, fewer and fewer people are willing to cooperate with him to continue playing.

And on the other side, more and more.

He couldn't understand why the poor people on the other side were not even military pay, but they were willing to follow Liu Ruguo. If it was because of the nobles, Drake was not a noble either!

The front-line sentries reported the latest military information to Drake in the evening. A unit crossing the Mersey River to try to eliminate the Qingming Army sentries landed on the south bank, and was then wiped out by a small-scale force that emerged from somewhere.

After that, the small-scale infantry gathered more troops, set up camp tents on the river bank, launched a raid on the stone bridge in the afternoon, and then broke through the two hundred defenders at the bridgehead and occupied the bridge deck.

When the sentries set off, they had cleared the sentries along the river bank to the east and west sides, and removed each of the English Scottish troops to the front posts. It can be imagined that on this evening, the Ming army was gathering on the north bank of the Mersey River.

There was not much time left for Drake. A team of scouts crossed the town that was overwhelmed by a large army. At the last moment before nightfall, they climbed the bell tower and looked at the brightly lit tents on the river bank outside.

It doesn't matter what the scouts saw the cannons placed in the camps and the enemy's size far beyond what they expected.

On the night of late summer, the two sides mobilized more than 30,000 troops, which affected the lives of more than 100,000 people. They were repeatedly mobilized in Manchester, a small area that was only 30 miles in a radius.

Meng Xin, who escaped from death, continued to move forward. He crossed the Mersey River as he wished and climbed to the other side, but failed to restrain his elder brother and brother-in-law's heads as he wished.

Can't tell the difference.

He couldn't tell which one was the eldest brother's skull, nor did he know which one was the brother-in-law's head.

The anger he had accumulated in his heart for half a month could only make him cry into a pool of mud on the river bank where people were coming and going, facing dozens of sharp wooden pillars that penetrated straight into the sky.

The troops ordered to support the front line were Echigo Chiho of Uesugi. Baihu was a young man in his twenties who led his team to rescue Meng Xin and wiped out all the enemies without leaving any of them.

This time, he helped Meng Xin up, who was crying in mud, and told him: "Tomorrow, march."

Until now, Meng Xin has not figured out what this young man is called. Their communication is not smooth, and even if he writes his name, Meng Xin cannot recognize it completely.

So in my heart, Meng Xin always called him the Zhijiang Circle.

Naojiang admired Meng Xin's loyalty and his courage. With a few iron cannons in the court, he dared to stand in the trenches and shoot dozens of enemies, and shot and killed them in more than ten days, injuring more than 20 enemies.

Although the Southern Barbarians are still Southern Barbarians, they are at least very powerful Southern Barbarians standing on their own side.

Meng Xin wanted to find Zhijiang to ask for a knife, but he didn't give it to him.

He knew very well what Meng Xin wanted to do if he wanted a knife.

On the front line, many soldiers of Shuntian'an Minyi Army had this need. The biggest thing they had in common was that they had relatives and their families died in this battle, especially like Meng Xin.

Several people were injured in the house, and the subordinates were killed and were curled up in the trench with wounds on their bodies for a whole month. The elder brother's head was hanging on the other side, and he couldn't eat well or sleep well.

At this time, give him a knife. When he rushed into the town tomorrow, he would raise the knife to the enemy's strong men, ordinary people, old, weak women and children. Even if a harmless cat with humans and animals rushed over in front of him, he would chop it up without mercy.

It’s not that Naoe thinks revenge is not good, and revenge in this era is very easy to understand and normal.

However, in Naojiang, the commander has not yet received the order from the superior to break the city and then release the robbery.

He believed that Liu Ruguo and Uesugi Keikaku were both conducting a gain or loss assessment for this battle to decide whether robbery was needed.

"Sir, I will give you a knife before that."
Chapter completed!