After watching Bernard and the others being taken away by the soldiers, the stone that Flender was hanging in his heart finally fell.

Now, Bernard, the male lion, can no longer come out to hurt people except for roaring in the cage.

Flender turned around and walked towards the large leather chair that once belonged to Bernard~

From the door of the hall, the armrests of the chairs had become smooth after a long period of friction, emitting a yellowish glow in the light of candlelight.

Ever since Bernard coerced his son Robert to retreat from the city of Thorne, it has become the place where Bernard held military meetings. Bernard, who sat in the large leather chair, was only an earl, but he was the de facto ruler of the Thorne court, holding power and controlling the government.

Today, the former owner of the chair has become a prisoner, replaced by the new ruler of the Besançon court.

In front of the large leather chair is a large wooden table, which is said to have been built for him by Bernard over a period of three years under the orders of the best craftsmen of the country. The table top is carved with delicate patterns, and the edges and corners around it are polished to an unusually smooth finish. The entire bench table can accommodate 50 people at a time, and even the matching chairs are specially made.

At this moment, Flender, who was sitting on the large leather chair, was slightly proud in his heart.

Looking at the officers at the table who had served him faithfully for years, Flender spoke.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Flender raised his voice, and everyone in the hall immediately stood up and turned their eyes to the ruler.

"The war lasted several years, consumed a lot of manpower, financial and material resources, and the people were struggling to make ends meet and their homes were shattered. Today, we have finally defeated the guy who started this evil war and betrayed God. This time, God is on our side. Therefore the wicked will be punished, and justice will be done. ”

"Kill him! Kill him! ”

Suddenly, the atmosphere in the hall suddenly became intense. Art also stood up, but did not shout with the crowd. For he knew in his heart what the consequences would be of putting Bernard to death at once.

Flender looked at the people present with anger and stretched out his hand to signal everyone to be quiet.

"Yes, I wanted to kill that bastard too, but now is not the time. Bernard was Chancellor of the Exchequer for many years, and owned the most fertile land in the country, and amassed a lot of money over the years. If we let him die so easily, then what have we won by winning this war? ”

The crowd stopped talking, but quietly listened to Flender tell the pros and cons.

"In addition, Bernard is inextricably linked to many nobles in the Duchy, and if he dies at our hands now, we will not only anger those nobles, but also most likely lose their position in the negotiations with the Duchy in the future."

"Marquis, what do you say we should do?"

As soon as Flender finished speaking, a senior officer in the Liberation Army asked.

Flender looked around at everyone, and the people who could stand here were absolute henchmen, and he didn't intend to hide it.

"It's not complicated. First, he immediately sent someone to interrogate Bernard and ask him to explain where he had hidden the money he had looted over the years. As soon as I entered the city, I sent people to search the Earl's palace in Bernard and other places where gold and silver might be hidden, and only then did I find more than half a million Fennig's money. This does not correspond to the actual situation. When Bernard fled Besançon, he swept away decades of taxes in the national treasury, at least millions of pfennighs. Add to that the savings he has saved over the years of running the Saône, and that's countless. ”

When everyone heard that Bernard had amassed such a huge amount of wealth, their eyes widened. In their opinion, they are only thousands of pfennigh a year, and this old guy occupies so much wealth alone, and his heart is inevitably unbalanced.

"Second, bring him back to Besançon and put him under house arrest, where he will be served with good food and drink." The next words Flender did not say directly - after he stabilized the internal and external situation, Bernard would die of a very "unexpected" violent illness.

"Next, let's discuss the matter of taking over the defense of Thorne and those surrenders......"

…………

On the second day, the sun rose slowly from the east side of the Saône, and the morning light slowly climbed the low hills in the distance, and then fell on the city. The dark red blood on the eastern wall had long since solidified overnight, and it was particularly conspicuous in the sunlight, and the lingering smell of blood still filled the air.

Inside and outside the city walls, the soldiers in charge of cleaning the battlefield were still busy. In teams of three or two, they carried the corpses of their own soldiers, who had stiffened on the ground, to the wagon, and then pulled them down and placed them next to a large pit outside the city gate that the peasants and miscellaneous servants were digging intensively. According to the order from above, these corpses must be burned in a centralized manner to prevent the plague from raging.

As far as the eye can see, several large pits have been dug one after another around the area, and the peasants and soldiers are building wooden frames for cremation under the command of craftsmen. The clergy standing next to the corpse muttered scriptures for the soldiers who had died in the battle for the succession......

Inside the city, the residents of the city, who had been hiding at home since the battle between the two armies, saw that the streets were full of soldiers of the Liberation Army, and carefully pushed open the windows of the second-floor attic to look around. Seeing other wandering homeless people and small vendors walking freely in the streets, he dared to open the closed gate and go out to the neighborhood to inquire about the situation in the city.

As soon as the fighting was over, the few tavern and shop owners in the city began to think about how to make some money back from the soldiers of the Liberation Army, who had cost them a lot of money.

Seeing the signs posted on the main streets and at the city gates, these people began to open the doors of their shops that had been closed for months. After tidying up the back kitchen and setting up the tables, chairs and benches, some soldiers who were looking for recreation in various parts of the city with bounties walked towards the store in groups of three or five~

Flender was quite strict in governing the army, except for some killing, wounding and looting on the day he first entered the city of Thorne, there were almost no soldiers in the city of Thorne now.

The soldiers who wanted to take advantage of the chaos were not cut off, so Flender's Chinese military law team would hang several heads of soldiers who disobeyed the ban on the city walls every day.

As the notices posted by the Liberation Army in the city spread, more and more people began to take to the streets, enjoying the long-lost freedom. Even though the streets are still full of feces, urine, mud and broken walls, it is filthy. But that doesn't stop people from going out.

Around the corner of the street, a few vendors followed a group of patrolling soldiers, selling their wares, not fearing being chased away or abused by the bloodied soldiers. If it had been in the past, I am afraid that I would have been punched and kicked by the soldiers in Thorne City, and then taken to the mine to exchange for a few drinks.

…………

After a few days of clearing and fortification, all the defenders of the various gates of Thorne City were replaced by the Liberation Army, and all the important places such as granaries and arsenals in the city were also guarded by Flender's officers.

To the north of the city, in a large stone courtyard that used to store grain and grass, soldiers who had been captured and surrendered during the defeat were imprisoned.

Flender wasn't about to kill them all. Although these men had previously been under Bernard's orders, as soldiers, they did not have much bargaining capital. Whoever gives them a salary, they will give their lives to whomever they want. Flender, who had led the Midsummer Legion on a campaign for many years, understood this, and this was the only reason why these soldiers were still alive. These experienced soldiers on the battlefield will become another weapon for him to expand his territory in the future.

In addition, all the officers captured during the siege were held in solitary confinement in a mansion near the South Gate. Many of these people were loyal followers of Bernard, and even when the army was besieging the city, they did not flee for their lives and surrender to the enemy. What awaits them will be a different fate from those of the soldiers.

…………

In the northwest corner of the city of Thorne, this area is the temporary garrison of the Welsh Legion.

In an ordinary rich man's house, the handyman servant went through the wooden door opposite the thatched hut used by the handyman, turned left and went down the stairs to a room where the horses were fodder.

After passing through a thirty-foot-long passage with candlelight flickering on the walls on either side, two men dressed in civilian clothing and armed with sharp blades at their waists, entered a wooden semi-enclosed fence raised and lowered by a winch, and descended fifteen feet to a cylindrical chamber on all sides. When you walk out of the chamber, you see a small wooden door guarded by four soldiers, and a few steps further on, you will find a secret prison in the city of Thorne, from which it is almost impossible to escape.

The secret cell consisted of seven cells in which prisoners were kept, all made of stone bars up to three feet thick, with the only entrance and exit being a half-man's height above the ground.

Guarded by several personal soldiers, Art gently covered his nose and bowed his head into the dungeon gate, where Ron and Stanley were already standing.

After a moment of habituation, Art was finally able to see the scene in the dungeon—dozens of iron chests of various sizes, piles of gold and silver utensils, and various valuables, almost filling the entire dungeon.

In the corner of the dungeon, a few fleshy guys were paralyzed in a pile of and urine, unable to see whether they were alive or dead.

"My lord, all the goods that can be collected are here, I estimate that there must be millions of pfennighs, maybe millions~" Stanley's tone trembled slightly, and the experience of the past few days still made him feel excited at the moment.

Rewind the clock to a few days ago.

While the Legions of the Restoration Army were desperately attacking the city outside the city of Thorne, the Welsh Legion contingent led by Stanley himself had been lurking in the city for many days.

The task force was limited, and apart from secretly passing on the city's defense forces a few times at the beginning, it did not play much role in the battle to break through the city of Thorn.

However, the main mission of Stanley's task force was not to assist in the destruction of the city, and they had only focused on one thing from the beginning of their infiltration into the city - to monitor the heads of the five chambers of commerce in Thorne.

Yate needs money, a lot of money.

Step by step, the Welsh Legion has become a behemoth, a behemoth that has become powerful and devours Ath's golden blood.

After the capture of Thorne, Bernard's legendary wealth will inevitably become the target of public criticism, and the new monarch Flender will not allow Art to manipulate Bernard's wealth, which is a big taboo.

Yate is half a businessman, and since he is a businessman, he certainly knows the temperament of a businessman. In these troubled times, merchants are bound to hoard large quantities of gold and silver in safe places.

Looking at the whole West, the safest place is Thorne.

When the war of the successors spread to the west, many wealthy merchants sold their possessions and buried the gold and silver that were easy to carry and hide in the fortified city of Thorne.

So when everyone was looking at Bernard's wealth, Yate had already begun to lay out.

On the eve of the destruction of the city, some of the richest merchants in the city of Saône were attacked by bandits, and the masked bandits attacked them at night and kidnapped several of them and their relatives......

At that time, the city of Thorne was in danger, and a few lowly wealthy businessmen were tied up, so naturally they couldn't cause huge waves.

Stanley led someone to kidnap the wealthy merchant and take him to this secret prison that they had already cleansed, and then it was easy to torture.

This kind of thing has already happened once in the city of Kodor, but the Count of Kodor surrendered on his own initiative, and there was no war in the city, so the action was naturally much smaller.

“...... My lord, these are the treasures that we have unearthed from all over the city while the city is being breached. The wealthy merchants confessed more than these goods, but the time for the Liberation Army to take control of the city was too fast, and we did not have time to dig out those goods. But I've got the mark to dig up when the situation stabilizes. Stanley gave a brief report on what he had gained after the break.

Art nodded in approval, then took a torch and walked into a cell where the boxes had not yet had time to be opened.

"Open!"

Behind him, Ron pulled out the hand axe on his waist and struck it at the copper lock on the iron box, and the copper lock fell in response.

As the lid of the iron box was slowly lifted by Ron, the beating flames were particularly dazzling under the refraction of gold.

"Stanley, did the task force and soldiers involved in the operation have all been given gag orders?" Art turned his head slightly.

"Your Excellency, rest assured, the people involved in the operation are veterans of the Welsh Legion, and most of them have relatives in the valley. The owner of the mansion has also disappeared. ”

"Well, this matter is well done, I will ask the Chinese army to give you a separate record of military merits. Those involved in the operation were given a military reward. ”

"Thank you, sir."

Stanley turned his head and glanced at the dying merchants in the corner of the dungeon, "My lord, these people~?" ”

"Do it cleanly." Art left the dungeon with a word.

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

The next day, the Wells Corps took the initiative to bury the corpses of the enemy, and the corpses were transported by wagon to a mass grave somewhere outside the city.

The pedestrian soldiers who avoided it would have noticed why the carriage in which the Welsh Regiment was transporting the corpses had such deep rut marks......

A battle-hardened battle for the successor is almost over, and Art, who has fueled the flames, will enjoy the huge dividends of the war with all the victors.

It's just that he put the dividend of 2.2 million fennig into his money bag in advance.

The next thing is more to do with these dazzling things......