Chapter 43: Moria's New Army

The prince's military regime was also modified by imitating Gawain, and he made all the peasants of Moria and Thessaly work the fields, and then entrusted his slave Axepocus to manage the trade and commerce. Pen | fun | pavilion www. biquge。 Info will use all the profits to recruit soldiers to form a new army within the empire. The prince's recruitment targets were roughly divided into two places: first, the fierce mountain people of the Epirus region, who had no intention of cultivating farmland at all, and there was no arable land there to earn a living, so they "took their sabers, led their horses, and carried three wives in rotten clothes and seven bare-ass children, followed by an orthodox earth priest", and entered the city of Thessaly in groups at the behest of Prince John, and entered the city of Thessaly to enter the camp - the prince placed their families near the camp city, paid part of the salary and armaments, and granted the rest to the fields to compensate; In another place, on the border between Thessaly and Thessaloniki, in the valley of the Wadarite, there has always been a "Persian naturalized tribe" who converted to Orthodoxy a hundred years ago, and no one cares whether the origin of the Mazars or the Bolgar Turks is that the bureaucrats of the imperial capital all call them Persians - the princes are exempt from taxes and manage their uncle Isaac. Komnenos (Isaac now based near the holy mountain of Athos to collect taxes) reached an agreement for the group to carry their horses into the camp to take the oath of service.

The prince then trained the Epirus as spearmen and archers, while the Vadaritai cavalry were all issued with light linen armor (a mixture of flax and armor pieces to be exact) and recurve bows, and in a short time 2,000 cavalry and 3,000 infantry were formed, known as the "New Army of Moria", and the chief instructors were the prince's military adviser Tetisius and Thessaly's Dugelius Diognis.

Subsequently, the prince imitated the mounted cavalry of Gawain and Anna, and also formed a heavy cavalry team, a total of 600 people, of which 200 were recruited Norman, Italian, and Frankish wandering mercenaries, wearing armor and holding mounted spears, called "lancers"; The remaining 400 men were native cavalry, but not of the Pronian landlords, most of them shepherds or servants recruited by the prince, and they were also dressed in armor and fought with light spears and bows and arrows in conjunction with the "lancers", known as the "light cavalry" - a force that was more swift and light than the mounted cavalry. It is not surprising that all cavalry charge-the-gun or combat training was given to the Count of Blois and the Count of Normandy, who were hired by the prince with high salaries and concessions to serve the prince: Roman emperors and generals hired poor and brave Westerners as mercenaries early on.

Taking advantage of the pilgrims' expedition to Danishmund, the emperor also commanded on all fronts:

The Emperor personally allocated 500 Tecopo soldiers to escort Raymond, the "Archcount of Laudisia";

Cosa and Brenus each rode 3,000 paces, and marched north along Philadofiam and Afyon, all under the command of Harold, supplemented by Mikhail, the chief of the palace guard, plus the men and horses originally stationed in Bithynia, and gathered 8,000 men to "follow" the main brigade of pilgrims to recover the lost territory, and the target was the Paphragonia region with Castamonu and Gangara as the core;

Prince John sent all the new troops, with Tetisius as the general and the Counts of Blois and Normandy as lieutenants, and marched directly from Afyon along the Sakarya River, aiming at the Fort of Ankara;

Gawain (one of the emperor's odd soldiers, with a funny expression) laid siege to Kayseri with all his might, cutting off Danishmund's reinforcements southwest of the plateau and ensuring the siege of Ankara by Moria's new army.

As for the old general Theodoro of Trabzon, he also sent 4,000 elite troops from the "New Caesarea Gate" to threaten the city of Amasia.

This deployment is the standard "all sides go hand in hand, each other is the horn", the purpose is to make Merrick overstretched and exhausted, and then cripple and even destroy Danishmond with a single blow, just like the original Sultan of Rûm, the emperor really spent a lot of effort on this, "I have received news that Gilici may have died in his court conspiracy, and now Konya and Ankara have fallen into the hands of Merrick's enemy chieftains, and their rule is unstable, and the people are eager to return to the Roman Empire." John's new army can be bold and bold as long as he beware of Gawain's traitor. ”

But privately, Prince John also had his own calculations, he had already summoned Tetisius, Stephen and Robert before leaving, leaving aside Diognis, "I and my Turkic slaves are sitting in Corinth, so we will not participate in this expedition, and we will obey Tetisius in everything." Moreover, the Forces nouvelles cannot be Gawain's adversary, and therefore I advise you to - to avoid Gawain's military action, and not to break out into any conflict; Second, this time, it is a fundamental priority to participate in actual combat training, and it does not necessarily have to be conquered; The third point worth noting is that for Lord Raymond, it is not necessary to follow his orders to ensure the independence of the command of the new army. ”

In the camp of Chivet, Field Marshal Conrad also said the same thing to his henchmen, "When our army enters the mountains of Paphragonia, no soldier is allowed to leave your field of vision, and you are not allowed to leave the field of vision of me and Archbishop Bisser. ”

At Nicomidea, the Duke of Aquitaine also summoned the other two counts and all the knights, "We are all warriors from Aquitaine, Toulouse, and Soissons, and we must all be in one group, and outsiders should not come in casually." ”

When the Feast of the Wung came, all the men and horses were gathered together except for the Bithynia Road, and the Archbishop of Milan, Bice, consecrated the weapons of the vast contingent of the whole field, and then the whole army was naturally divided into two groups: the five thousand men of Tetisius raised their flags from the eastern valley of Nicaea and headed straight for Ankara; The rest of the army totaled more than 200,000 people, the head of the team went to the junction of Brasilon and Bithynia, the tail remained on the outskirts of Nicaea, and the whole army was divided into three arrays, Raymond was in the front, Conrad was in the middle, Guillaume was in the last, and the latter two were constantly changing positions in the middle, as if they were very cautiously competing for the "last".

"Completely, completely without a body, as a warrior of Christ, discipline, what a laziness!" Looking into the deep valley, Raymond under the holy spear was furious.

As the winding mountain road gradually became wide and smooth, and Raymond could see the vast black sea of Yukchen in the distance with the naked eye, they were to advance to Sinop Castle, use it as a relay station, and then turn to the general assault on Paphragonia. And in the wasteland on the seashore below, a Roman army is holding up various flags and greeting them.

Leading the way were none other than Harold and Mikhail. (To be continued.) )