A Few Minor Problems

"What if the Poles blew up your railways after you passed through, cut off your supplies, and launched guerrilla attacks from behind?"

Just then, a child's voice piped up at a rather inopportune moment. Lakshmi Bai clearly had her own thoughts on the matter.

There were military courses in the imperial palace. As a famous rebel leader in Indian history, Franz thought there was no harm in letting her learn a little about such things.

Still, the reason Lakshmi Bai could raise this question was that Franz had explained the power of railways to her.

Her own experience had also given Lakshmi Bai a firsthand sense of the powerful pulse of the industrial age. Though she hadn't been thrown to the ground, it had still made her understand deeply that no carriage or ox cart on the Indian Subcontinent could compare with the steel behemoth before her.

Franz's younger sister, Little Maria, had also wanted to come along for the excitement, but war was hardly something one could associate with pleasant things. Franz still hoped his family would stay far away from war, so he hadn't brought his sister.

As for the future Lakshmi Bai would face, it was far more brutal than war. It was better to let her recognize reality early.

Lakshmi Bai's question made Franz think of the sabotage and guerrilla warfare common in later generations.

However, he also wanted to hear how Albrecht, a renowned general of the age, would respond to such tactics.

According to the etiquette of the time, ladies weren't supposed to interrupt conversations among gentlemen. But Lakshmi Bai wasn't Austrian, for one, and for another, she was only a child.

So Albrecht, who took etiquette very seriously, wasn't too bothered. He also found the question interesting, since commanders of the conventional school