Chapter 169: Lelouch’s Stratagem Secures Northern Europe
“Congratulations! You’ve indeed been promoted to brigadier general! Although this time it’s not due to Army merits, but with His Majesty personally nodding approval, what more is there to say? The details no longer matter.”
After the audience with Emperor Wilhelm, the other core general officers who participated in the Baltic Sea and Latvia campaign learned that Lelouch had also been promoted, and they all congratulated him, inviting him to join the victory banquet the next evening.
This time, Marshal Mackensen received commendation, and four naval generals—General Hipper, Scheer, Vice Admiral Birdick, and Hermann—were each promoted one rank, so the victory banquet was held on a grand scale, not just celebrating Lelouch alone, but everyone sharing the joy together.
These people had all, to varying degrees, received favors from Lelouch. Everyone knew full well: it was Lelouch’s design that forced the enemy to come out and fight to prove their innocence, allowing the Germania Navy to annihilate them.
Facing everyone’s compliments, Lelouch was also very modest: “My promotion to brigadier general is nothing. Haven’t all of you been promoted from lieutenant general to general, or from major general to lieutenant general? My meager merits are truly insignificant compared to yours.”
As soon as he said this, General Hipper, who had already climbed to deputy commander of the High Seas Fleet, immediately objected: “That’s no way to talk! Everyone knows your merits far exceed a single brigadier general. If you weren’t only 25 years old, you’d definitely have been promoted even higher!
You’re just suffering from being young and inexperienced, so you can only make up for it with stratagems and military merits. For merits that others can get promoted directly for, you probably need two or three times as much, but among us, who dares underestimate your abilities! Enough with the false modesty—don’t be late tomorrow.”
With that, Lelouch bid farewell to the crowd and first returned to the Naval Sanatorium where he was staying to rest, preparing to attend the banquet the next day.
These past few days, he had been following the fleet bouncing around at sea, where food and lodging conditions definitely couldn’t compare to those on shore.
Although Lelouch had already been to sea several times and never got seasick at all, his sleep quality after landing was still greatly improved.
After a good sound sleep, he got up the next morning, washed up and tidied himself, made an internal call for room service, and a waiter soon pushed a meal cart delivering freshly baked blueberry pancakes and cod fillet with asparagus, along with fresh hot milk.
While eating breakfast, Lelouch quickly noticed a recent internal war report on the meal cart, which only high-ranking generals could see.
This Naval Sanatorium was originally only for general-level personnel to stay in, so the military intelligence briefings provided were quite accurate, unlike the watered-down newspapers for the public.
Lelouch casually flipped it open and found a battle results summary for a recent campaign inside.
On the land warfare side, the Riga Bay and Courland Peninsula campaigns were expected to cumulatively annihilate the enemy’s 12th Army Group entirely, while heavily damaging two armies and annihilating one army of the 2nd Army Group.
The enemy’s 12th Army Group, with a full strength of 310,000 men, had suffered over 70,000 casualties in the previous fierce battles. Now, with both sea and land retreat routes cut off, 240,000 were ultimately trapped on the Courland Peninsula and chose to surrender directly.
The enemy’s 2nd Army Group had only one army completely annihilated, totaling over 45,000 men, which was encircled and wiped out inside Riga city.
Another army was infiltrated and routed by the Germania Army during the campaign east of Riga, retreating while fighting, so it couldn’t be completely annihilated—just one division destroyed, two divisions repelled, with 28,000 losses.
The last routed army was responsible for coastal defenses in Estonia. Because Germanians had previously seized Hiiumaa and Saaremaa through landing operations, the garrison forces on those islands were of course completely annihilated.
The troops guarding the coastal areas initially tried to counterattack to retake the islands, relying on requisitioned civilian ships to attempt re-landing for reinforcements. The result was naturally just sending more lives in vain. They failed to rescue the original island garrison, and the dispatched reinforcements also fell into encirclement, either directly annihilated by the Germania Army pushing back on the beaches or trapped.
This rescue attempt cost the Lushans another 20,000-plus lives before they gave up.
So in total, the Lushans lost the entire 12th Army Group of 310,000 men, plus nearly 110,000 from the 2nd Army Group, for a cumulative annihilation of 420,000 regular troops.
Additionally, if including the over 30,000 fisherman militiamen on Hiiumaa and Saaremaa who had only a few weeks of military training, that would make a cumulative enemy annihilation of 450,000.
Another brilliant great victory. The Lushans’ Northwestern Front had at least 40% of its combat strength knocked out.
The Lushans’ Northwestern Front originally only had the 2nd and 5th Army Groups; the 12th Army Group was still borrowed by Commander Nicholas Ruzsky from the Northern Front Army, and it ended up completely annihilated.
Therefore, the war report noted that the Lushans had made emergency adjustments: after this battle, the “Northwestern Front” organization was directly disbanded and fully merged into the “Northern Front Army”.
In any case, all of Latvia’s territory and Estonia’s western coastal regions had already fallen, so over half of the “Northwestern Front”‘s defense zones no longer existed—what was the point of keeping that Front Army?
The Tsar urgently ordered the Lusha 1st, 2nd, and 5th Army Groups to form the Northern Front Army together, to guard eastern Estonia and the capital region around Saint Petersburg, while also allocating some forces to defend places like Helsinki on the north bank of the Gulf of Finland.
The Northern Front Army commander would remain the original commander, General Mikhail Alekseyev, while General Nicholas Ruzsky, who had just suffered defeat, was temporarily demoted to commander of the 2nd Army Group.
Additionally, since the 2nd Army Group had also just been heavily damaged, losing over 100,000 men, the Tsar urgently rounded up vagrants and refugees from the streets of Petersburg to conscript them, pulling in several hundred thousand at once without even fully equipping them with rifles, stuffing them directly into the 2nd Army Group to fill shortages, and starting basic training.
Clearly, Nicholas II had fallen into extreme fear, worried that Germanians would advance directly from Estonia to Saint Petersburg. He also drew troops from various Fronts on the Southern Front to the Northern Front, determined to defend his capital to the death.
“Very good, with Nicholas II treating headaches with headache remedies and foot pains with foot remedies like this, it perfectly facilitates our next phase of major operations on the Southern Front.” Lelouch couldn’t help but mutter a comment to himself.
Lelouch subconsciously checked his watch—it was September 10th; the Southern Front offensive he had agreed on with Marshal Rupprecht was expected to be ready around September 20th.
Considering the two or three days by train on the return trip, and leaving some margin, he should head south within five days.
After all, upon returning to Odessa, he also needed to recuperate and readjust to the southern climate and water, otherwise how could he lead troops in battle if he fell ill? The troops were equipped with new weapons, and he needed to break in the command tactics.
If Nicholas II feared problems on the Northern Front and continued transferring troops north in the next ten days, leading to vulnerabilities in the south, that would perfectly facilitate action.
After finishing the Army war report, Lelouch set it aside first, then continued with the Navy’s battle statistics.
The Navy war report showed that this battle annihilated 4 enemy battleships（ Gangut-class 4, 2 sunk 2 captured）;
Pre-dreadnoughts 4（ Petropavlovsk-class 1 sunk, Borodino-class 1 sunk, Ekaterina II-class old ship 1 sunk 1 captured）;
Armored Cruisers 5, Light Cruisers/Protected Cruisers 9, Destroyers 15.
Total surrendered/captured enemy sailors 2,385, causing enemy deaths in battle, drowning, missing totaling over 15,200（ of which 4,500 were Tsar’s Guard sent by the Tsar to supervise the warships, belonging to the Army, who sank with the ships when sunk, or were shot by mutinous sailors and surrendering German soldiers on the spot）.
After this battle, the Lusha Baltic Fleet only had 2 pre-dreadnoughts left: “Saint Andrew” and the old ship “Twelve Apostles”, which had already been converted into fixed forts scuttled to block sea lanes.
Battleships and Armored Cruisers were completely wiped out to zero; 3 surviving old Protected Cruisers and 5 Destroyers remained. It could approximately be considered total annihilation.
On the Germania Navy side, losses had just been tallied.
This battle cumulatively lost 2 battleships（ “Rheinland” scuttled, “Posen” destroyed）
Heavily damaged battleship 1（ Nassau）, lightly damaged battleships 2（ Westfalen, Helgoland. Helgoland with minor damage）
Lightly damaged battlecruiser 1.
Lost pre-dreadnoughts 2（ “Friedrich der Grosse” directly sunk in battle, “Grand Duke Karl” towed back for scrap）
Heavily damaged pre-dreadnought 1（ “Barbarossa”）
Sunk light cruiser 1, heavily damaged light cruisers 2,
Sunk destroyers 2, heavily damaged destroyers 3.
Personnel killed in action, drowned, missing totaled 1,752, wounded 908.
Casualties kept so low was mainly because, except for “Friedrich der Grosse”, “Bremen”, and 2 destroyers that were directly sunk, the other damaged warships could beach and scuttle or be towed back for scrapping, resulting in far fewer deaths.
Moreover, although “Friedrich der Grosse” was sunk in battle, the Germania Navy controlled the battlefield at the time and could slowly salvage and rescue, saving nearly 300 more. But for “Bremen” and others sunk during the breakout, with Major General Birdick eager to escape without time for rescues, the casualty rate on those sunken ships reached 90%.
Judging purely by warship loss numbers, Germania’s advantage in this campaign wasn’t exaggerated, having scrapped 2 battleships and 2 pre-dreadnoughts themselves.
But by casualties, the Lushans’ losses were fully 9 times those of the Germanians—even excluding Army casualties, still 6-7 times that of the sailors.
Moreover, Germania’s lost pre-dreadnoughts were cheap, nearly 20-year-old ships originally slated for training duties.
No matter how you look at it, the results of this battle were a bountiful profit.
However, being an internal war report, the document ended with some official commentary and reflections, various opinions.
Lelouch patiently read through them, then unexpectedly saw some evaluations that quite displeased him.
“Someone actually thinks the final annihilation hard fight in this battle wasn’t of great strategic significance, and losing 2 battleships and 2 pre-dreadnoughts might affect future maritime pressure on the Britannians?
Absurd! What idiot think-tank nonsense is this, pure nitpicking drivel!”
Lelouch couldn’t help but laugh in anger upon seeing it.
But to be fair, there were indeed people who thought that way at the time. Examining their views closely, they still highly approved of the first phase action of “nearly bloodlessly luring and annihilating the Lusha Cruiser Fleet”.
Because that battle truly had strategic value: it severed the enemy’s sea lanes in Riga Bay, cutting off supplies to the enemy land forces in Riga Bay and the Courland Peninsula, hastening the collapse of the enemy land army.
But they believed that paying the price of 2 own battleships and 2 pre-dreadnoughts to destroy the enemy’s battleships and pre-dreadnought fleets in the latter half was somewhat pyrrhic.
Moreover, they thought the latter half action had little impact on the overall battle situation, and winning that battle wouldn’t allow their fleet to penetrate the Gulf of Finland and directly land at Saint Petersburg.
Thus, some believed “this was pure war of attrition, with both sides losing combat strength. Though two ships were captured, resources would be needed to refit them. In short, after this battle, the Empire’s overall battleship fleet strength would definitely decline compared to not fighting it.”
So one faction believed fighting this battle harmed the bigger picture against the Britannians. Even without fighting, the enemy’s battleship fleet, shrunk in Kronstadt harbor as an “existence fleet” under the Tsar’s “preserve the fleet” mindset, posed no threat.
Purely calculating numbers, this faction’s view could be argued: before the battle, the Empire had 17 battleships in perfect combat-ready state; after, the number temporarily dropped to 12, not rising back to 17 for over half a year.
Doesn’t that equal “wasting half a year of opportunity costs that could have been used to opportunistically engage the British Navy”?
Lelouch figured that if General Hipper or General Scheer saw these arguments, they’d be furious too. But these generals only knew fighting and killing, not politics, diplomacy, or economic blockade, so they couldn’t articulate rebuttals to such fallacies.
But Lelouch was versed in both civil and military arts, with prophetic knowledge of history a century ahead. With just a moment’s thought, he knew how to counter these people.
Later, at the victory banquet, he could discuss it with Hipper and the others, giving the Navy folks some advice on maximizing the follow-up strategic value of “annihilating the Lusha Baltic Fleet”.
……
That afternoon, Königsberg palace.
A grand victory banquet, with the Emperor’s approval, was held inside the palace. All recently meritorious land and navy generals from the Baltic Sea War Zone attended.
The reception also had some civilian officials from relevant departments or local officials from East Prussia to join in the fun and cheer up the generals.
In this year of great war, with the Britannia Navy blockade, all civilian supplies within Germania were tight, so such public banquets wouldn’t be too lavish to avoid bad optics if word spread to the people.
Just like Lelouch’s breakfast that morning, without even bacon or sausage, only relatively unblockaded seafood like fish. Königsberg was a port city with thriving local Baltic fisheries.
The current victory banquet was turned into a cocktail reception-style cold buffet, with unlimited thick-cut raw salmon, but other poultry and livestock meats and dishes not so abundant.
After the reception began, the initial eating, drinking, and mutual congratulations phase had nothing noteworthy.
While eating and drinking, Lelouch observed the attending guests and spotted a few old acquaintances besides the generals.
“Hey! Minister Baden, how come you’re here too? Weren’t you in Berlin?”
Lelouch immediately went up to greet him. Grand Duke Mark von Baden had already been smiling at him from afar, responding only when he approached:
“I thought you’d be the star of tonight’s victory banquet, surrounded by those generals toasting you, so I didn’t dare disturb.”
Lelouch smiled: “My insignificant behind-the-scenes work isn’t suitable for showing off yet. Let’s talk about your matters instead.”
Grand Duke Baden: “I’ve naturally come for Occupied Area Affairs Department business. Marshal Mackensen just took Riga city and the Courland Peninsula these past two days.
His Majesty probably listened to your advice yesterday? Regarding future resettlement of Volga Germanians and Baltic Germanians. After thinking it over, His Majesty still hopes that after the Lusha Empire collapses, Lithuania’s entire territory and most of Latvia can be integrated into the homeland.
But he also worries that the remaining Latvian areas north of Riga and all of Estonia won’t submit to the Empire, so he’s considered establishing an ‘Ostland Confederation’.”
How to specifically divide future direct occupation zones and puppet zones requires our Occupied Area Affairs Department to thoroughly survey local sentiments and understand public opinion before deciding. If some places have fierce local resistance, with direct rule costs too high, we won’t force annexation.”
（Note: “Ostland” is actually a transliteration of Ost-land, German for “Eastern Land”, but in the context, it refers to the future Baltic states region）
This matter was still distant, so Lelouch just listened casually without eagerness to opine—worst case, let Grand Duke Baden survey slowly first.
Lelouch hated premature celebrations; in Earth’s history, even winning the Eastern Front in the final war and signing《 the Brest Treaty》 for legal basis to annex Ostland, the Western Front collapsed, making it all illusory.
In this timeline, the outcome ultimately depended on who could press the brakes on the Emperor, General Staff Headquarters, and Armament Department.
Grand Duke Baden had expected him to expound at length, but seeing his lack of enthusiasm, lost motivation to say more.
The two just exchanged a few pleasantries about family matters; his nephew and niece who came with Grand Duke Baden were also very warm to Lelouch, congratulating him on his promotion to brigadier general.
Just as the Grand Duke finished congratulating and was about to say goodbye to chat with others, a few generals approached from afar: General Hipper and Lieutenant General Birdick, joining the conversation between Lelouch and Grand Duke Baden.
“Hey, Lelouch, what are you doing here—discussing civilian government affairs?” General Hipper asked Lelouch while raising his glass to Grand Duke Baden.
“Minister Baden and I were chatting about Occupied Area Affairs Department business, regarding future handling and rule of Ostland territories.” Lelouch explained offhand.
Hipper: “Is that so? Looks like the Empire’s armies will soon reach Estonia? That’s great news. See, I told you—our Navy fought bloody to annihilate the Lushans’ Baltic Fleet, which will definitely help the Army occupy more land along the Baltic Sea!
Some ungrateful staff officers in the Army are writing nonsense wargame deduction articles, claiming ‘the Lusha Baltic Fleet’s main force was just an existence fleet anyway; killing or not makes little difference, but fighting it instead sidelines the Navy for at least half a year from confronting the Britannians’—it pisses me off just hearing it!”
“Oh? You’ve seen that internal reference wargame deduction article too?” Lelouch asked playfully. “You even know it’s written by Army people—I didn’t. I just skimmed it over breakfast.”
Lelouch had originally wondered why internals were nitpicking and pouring cold water, but hearing it was Army rather than Navy made it slightly more reasonable—not that Germania had “Army-Navy rivalry”, but factional struggles definitely existed.
Hipper: “Of course I saw it! I was furious right after reading. I pulled strings to inquire—who do you think wrote it?”
Lelouch: “Who?”
Hipper: “Polish Theater staff officer Hoffmann!”
Lelouch recalled: “The Hoffmann under Marshal Hindenburg and Lieutenant General Ludendorff?”
On the current Polish battlefield, Marshal Hindenburg’s chief of staff was Lieutenant General Ludendorff, and the second-ranked deputy chief of staff was this Colonel Max Hoffmann.
This man, like Lelouch before, was only colonel rank, quite capable in practice with deep studies of the Lushans, but starting too low at war’s outbreak, so despite contributing many successful staff plans, he was still just colonel, several ranks below Ludendorff.
This phenomenon was much like later “ministry departments where the real workhorses are often grassroots directors”. Top leaders could rest easy, only deciding at key moments.
Facing Lelouch’s question, Hipper said bitterly:
“Who else but that Hoffmann? His staff deduction must represent Ludendorff’s views. I see it’s just that Hindenburg and Ludendorff see His Majesty delaying the ‘Polish salient campaign’, instead following Marshal Rupprecht’s strategic suggestion of ‘advancing on both Black Sea and Baltic wings’,
so their currently available forces are insufficient to encircle the Polish salient, only stalemating the enemy’s heavy troop group, leaving them envious. Hoffmann writing this article is really to downplay the strategic significance of the Baltic advance, urging His Majesty and General Staff Headquarters to shift strategic focus back to the Polish salient quickly.”
Lelouch could understand the intelligence Hipper had uncovered.
It was a clash of interests—unavoidable. Currently, Marshal Mackensen handled the northern coastal route of Eastern Front operations, Marshal Rupprecht the southern coastal route. Marshal Hindenburg and Marshal Leopold handled the central route.
Just like on Earth two decades later, the “Southern Army Group”, “Central Army Group”, “Northern Army Group” competing for resources—who wouldn’t want more Empire-wide resource tilt toward their own Army Group’s main axis?
But Lelouch wasn’t deliberately targeting Hindenburg and Ludendorff; it was a different era.
If two decades later, with ample mechanized troops, motorized transport, denser rail nets, central breakthrough to the heartland could indeed be considered.
The problem was it was only 1915, without motorized transport; Germania military lacked even sufficient cars, and German-Lusha rail gauges differed.
Central breakthrough at most annihilates a huge enemy force, wiping out Polish garrisons—but then what?
To continue advancing into Lusha’s vast central quagmire thousands of li, how to solve logistics?
In a non-motorized era, with absolute sea control secured, advancing along coastlines was naturally the steadiest, easiest for logistics.
Because Lusha’s mobilization and manpower were too vast; killing even two million more troops wouldn’t be decisive. But blockading all their coastlines and seizing their southern grain areas, starving them for years, might make them implode.
Thus, Lelouch had to fight the 1915 “central breakthrough” doctrine to the end—not factionalism, but because he held the truth.
The 1915 “central breakthrough faction” typically hadn’t grasped Clausewitz’s《 On War》, unaware war was politics by other means, or that military must serve economy and politics.
……
So, after hearing Hipper’s inside info on Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Max Hoffmann denigrating the strategic significance of the “both coastal wings advance” doctrine for small-group interests,
Lelouch immediately gave Hipper advice, thinking up counterarguments for them:
“General Hipper, rest assured—His Majesty will understand the huge benefits of ‘annihilating the Lusha Baltic Fleet’ over ‘letting their battleships remain an existence fleet cowering in home port’.
Annihilating the enemy’s battleships isn’t just for sinking battleships themselves, much less for personal merits! Some follow-up plans require fully wiping out the enemy navy first.
For example, now that you’ve seized absolute sea control in the Baltic Sea, you can attempt even more aggressive moves—doesn’t Lieutenant General Birdick hold our reconnaissance cruiser fleet?
In the coming days, we can keep pushing: clear more mines from Baltic Sea lanes, not just the south but deep into the Gulf of Bothnia between Sweden and Finland north, ensuring our cruisers can penetrate that sea area to hunt enemy transport ships.
But if we hadn’t wiped out the enemy’s battleships, would our cruisers dare venture so deep? If enemy battleships exit the Gulf of Finland, swing north to block the Gulf of Bothnia entrance, our cruisers inside would be dead.”
Hipper was stunned: “Deep into the Gulf of Bothnia? If for penetrating the Gulf of Bothnia, annihilating the enemy battleship fleet is indeed necessary……
But why penetrate the Gulf of Bothnia? Ah! You think the Lushans will ship resources south along the Gulf of Bothnia coast from Finland by sea, to Helsinki or Saint Petersburg? You want us to intercept enemy transport ships on that route?”
Hipper already grasped the military necessity, but evidently didn’t understand economics, nor the economic value of intercepting shipping deep in that sea area.
When the Naval Ministry planned annihilating the Lusha Baltic Fleet main force, they indeed hadn’t thought deeply about economics, just aiming to destroy the enemy fleet as much as possible.
And to Navy Ministry folks, if intercepting, just block the Gulf of Finland entrance, right? Why go all the way inside the Gulf of Bothnia? Enemy transports to Helsinki or Saint Petersburg all pass the Gulf of Finland entrance anyway, Hanko Cape too?
It was like controlling a shipping line’s endpoint—why not just block there? Why bother halfway with extra effort and risk?
For Hipper’s mindset, Lelouch could only shake his head helplessly first, then start from basics to educate:
