In this unquiet winter, two major events have happened in the Northlands.

The first thing was that the emperor marched into the swamp with thousands of his legions.

The second thing was that the legion had escaped from the swamp again.

They maintained a fairly steady march pace at the beginning, because although the decisive battle with the Wiegand was unfavorable, the overall process was relatively stable, so the legion as a whole maintained a relatively stable marching pace.

Although they left behind a large number of wounded troops to slow down the Weorgand southward, more often than not, the army continued to swell.

At the time of Dingbei City, the emperor and his legions totaled more than 8,000 people (8,000 legions, 3,000 casualties, and more than 1,000 wounded, but along the way collected the militia that had been resettled. ）

By the time they reached Sea Castle, the army had grown to twelve thousand.

This does not include the fact that many soldiers were lost and other reasons did not arrive on the battlefield in time to make peace with the emperor.

It can be said that in the case of extreme mobilization, the Great Prussian Empire can completely subdue Edward with its national strength.

Previously, it was only a matter of transportation conditions and the conceit of a certain emperor and commander that limited the size of the imperial army.

By the way, because the Sward Knight threw almost all the heavy cavalry of the empire in vain, he has been placed under house arrest, and even the head of the Imperial Knights has been suspended.

All he can do now is sit alone in a carriage specially designed to carry him, living a life without food and clothing......

But the Duke of Valicia, who obviously did nothing on the battlefield, was praised by the officials as a "serious general", although Emperor Perris was extremely disgusted with this person who did nothing at the critical moment on the battlefield, but there was no way to deny that in his hands, there was no imperial knight's life was wasted.

One bureaucrat even made a picture of the Duke of Valicia as a general with a face on his face, and eventually named the painting "The Mainstay".

And the painter did his best to complete this work.

He first painted a tall and mighty knight, then the knight rode on horseback, holding a one-handed light sword in his hand, and then behind him there were several horsemen, their expressions full of blood, and a few blood splashes hanging from the tip of the sword.

At their feet were two or three Wiegand corpses, and in the background behind them was a wooded field and a large group of Wiegand men rushing out of it, but they were still some distance away.

Although the meaning of the painting is not very clear just by looking at the sub-painting, in the eyes of insiders, this is exactly the outstanding contribution made by the Duke of Valicia on the battlefield.

Everyone remembered that when the Duke of Valicia was in command of the war, their battle situation, at least in terms of battle loss ratio, was completely superior, although most of that advantage came from the fire attack of some imprisoned general.

Regardless, the Duke of Valicia eventually put the painting away, determined to carry out his tactical thinking to the end, and then hung the gift of honor in the hall of his family castle forever.

All the descendants of his blood can recognize his achievements.

In a lost war, only he and his hussars bought precious time for the empire.

This is the most valuable information that should be recorded in the military halls of the empire.

The Duke of Valicia thought.

He tossed a half-eaten apple to the ground, and several peasants rushed up to pick it up.

"Lord Valicia, this is the army I raised from the ten nearby farms, I have to say, the Northland is still too poor, I have almost pulled out all the men in the village who can fight, and I have only managed to get a team of only two hundred people......

A hussar laughed.

If, after the end of the war, the development and use of the Imperial Infantry Corps and the Heavy Cavalry Corps suffered irreparable heavy losses, then the rapid development of light cavalry units was contrasted.

Some of the squire's owners were killed or captured by the Wiggans, but their squires were left in the camp unharmed by the decisions of the Sward knights.

In addition, some noble soldiers from the local area, who belonged to knights in the noble title, but were still in the light cavalry stage, also strengthened the class.

Naturally, the Imperial military could not leave these excellent soldiers alone, and they assigned new tasks to these soldiers with a very positive attitude......

Conscription, food conscription.

These were two big things, after the grain line was cut off by the soldiers of the Rhine Kingdom, they had to find a way to maintain the emperor's army from the devastated Northland.

In the end, the dozens of decent heavy cavalry remaining on the battlefield naturally would not be sent out casually.

So, after the war was over, they developed in a rather peculiar way.

If the troops led by the emperor himself were the branches of the great army, then these light cavalry formed flexible limbs.

They are like blood vessels, injecting nutrients into the legion so that it does not collapse.

It's a pity that such an advanced concept has not really been taken seriously at the moment.

After watching the half of the rotten apple he had thrown on the ground finally disappear into the hands of the three peasants, Valicia slowly asked, "What about the grain collection? Now that the grain routes of the empire are congested, collecting grain to supply the army is the most important thing!"

The hussar's smiling face froze a little.

"General, I searched all the villages, but all I found was a few bags of moldy millet and a few large boxes of white radish. I've already handed over all this to the Quartermaster's Office. ”

"Don't they have a little food?" asked Valicia, snapped. "Don't these mud-legged people usually have to spend the winter? I think you must have been careless in collecting food, which caused such trouble. ”

The light cavalry could bow their heads and say yes again and again.

But before Valicia's next insult rang out, a thought popped into his mind.

"General, although I have not been able to collect food from them, I have obtained many clues from their mouths. And those clues point in the direction of food. ”

"Oh, tell me, where did all the food go?"

"As far as I know from the area I searched, at least half of the grain has gone to one place, except for the grain that has been piled up in the granaries of the nobles!"

"Nobility is the foundation of the empire, and we must not provoke these decent people unless we encounter insurmountable trouble. Valicia frowned, "Why don't you tell me about it, where is the other place?"

"Valuno, a newly established free city of the Empire, I had thought of going there to collect taxes, but the mayor told me that the Emperor had promised them a ten-year tax-free cycle to help them build that poor place. But Sardinia was on top! It was definitely the most prosperous city I had ever seen in the Northlands, and they had so much food that they made wine! The merchants there had established guilds of all kinds, and the markets there were comparable to those of some of the wealthy towns in the south. ”

When the cavalry said these words, a faint trace of anger flashed in his eyes.

As a nobleman from a southern estate, he naturally disdained this kind of "country place" in the Northlands.

But when it comes to Valuno, the city has reached the point where it is so bustling that it is an eyesore.

He went to that place to collect taxes with great interest, but he did not expect to eat such a large closed door, and he looked extremely disgraced in front of a lowly merchant.

Especially that damn mayor, how dare he? How could he sit and meet a nobleman, and behave so naturally, who gave him the courage to do these things?

Therefore, when he encountered a problem, he almost did not hesitate to confess this place, and even did not hesitate to narrate it.

This is the apparently most damned part of the journey.

"An Imperial Free City?"

Valicia sank.

He was also an extremely disgusted man with such things as the Free City, where many serfs and merchants in his own realm hid and traded to avoid paying taxes to him.

And, in the most vague memory, he also seems to have a little impression of the city.

"Ah, you're talking about that damned place! Don't you know that the Emperor started this war to protect the inhabitants of that place? But I have not seen or heard of any troops from the city of Valuno. There were only a few knights, who said they were from the Valuno region, but they were by no means subordinate to the mayor. ”

"If it weren't for the geographical inconvenience of marching, perhaps the Empire's armies would have started from and requisitioned the provisions there. ”

Thinking of this, Valicia couldn't hold back any longer.

"Cavalry, you came from that place, then let me ask you, how many troops are deployed there, and how is the construction of the city wall?"

The light cavalry looked at his leader and swallowed slightly.

"Your Excellency, for a long time there were only two hundred guards in the city of Valuno, and they waited until the war broke out to temporarily hire some mercenaries and mobilize some citizens to fight. ”

"Mercenaries may be a bit of a nuisance, but the citizens are almost ineffective. On top of that, maybe we can bypass their defence and take the city straight away. ”

Valicia looked her head at the sky.

"I don't want any civil war in the empire to be superfluous, that's my basic position. ”

"But those contemptible countrymen, who refused to swear allegiance to His Majesty the Emperor when the Empire needed it most, should therefore be punished a little, even if we were reluctant. Cavalry, what's your name?"

"My lord, if only you could call me a lira. ”

"Very well, Lira, I will give you two hundred men, can you teach them a lesson, and then collect the taxes that should be obtained for the Empire?"

The cavalry nodded confidently.

"It's not a problem at all, I'm in five days...... No, three days, after three days, I will definitely give you a satisfactory answer. ”

............

Something like this happens almost every day.

Even in order not to leave it to the Wiegand people, the soldiers of Grand Pruss would not be soft on the villages along the way.

When the empire was completely evacuated from the north, the peasants looked at the burning land and wept, and the nobles fled in a panic in their wagons to their relatives in the south.

In short, there is a burning scene everywhere.

By the time Edward's army unhurriedly disposed of the remnants of the empire and arrived in what they remembered as "rich" the South, it was already a hellish scene.

One of the tribal generals scratched his head with some disdain, and said, "What is this?

Edward, however, only narrowed his eyes and ordered an attendant to capture a captured farmer.

He asked, "Who are you?" in the proficient Great Prussian.

The farmer looked at the chieftain in his costume who had seized him with some horror, and replied with some surprise.

"Chieftain, Chief Chief. I'm a farmer in the country of North. The only possessions I have have been taken away by the soldiers, and I have no more to hand over to you, but if you are willing to spare my life, I am willing to be your servant. ”

Edward glanced back at his team.

He kept these people with him in the hope that they would open up a little more.

"Farmer, I ask you, if the Weygans grant you grain and fields, and allow you to cultivate a piece of land, if you ask you for sixty percent of the harvest every time it is harvested, and keep the rest for you, will you?" (Here the grain production is borrowed from the average grain production ratio of the European Middle Ages, which harvests two to six times as much grain as it grows, and the upper limit of grain production does not exceed four times in view of the harsh seasons in the Northland.) According to this ratio, Edward could not even have a book. ）

"My lord, are you willing to leave me forty percent of the grain instead of taking me back as a slave?"

"What, you're worried?"

"No...... No, it's really that the conditions you gave are too good, I don't know what to say for a while......"

Edward took two steps forward, then patted the farmer on the shoulder with his own hand, and said softly, "As long as you are willing to work for me, I can protect you." Go and farm, and I'll give you as much as you can cultivate!"

The farmer's eyes filled with tears.

He shivered and dodged, and it took him a long time to come to his senses, looking at Edward's departing figure, lying on the ground and kowtowing several times.

Everyone