The capital of the Western Roman Empire, Ravenna, the Protectorate's Palace.

Ravenna is located in northern Italy, 10 km from the Adriatic Sea on a coastal plain and 111 km east of Bologna. In 402 AD, the Western Roman Emperor Honorus abandoned the city of Rome and decided to make it its capital. If history is not biased, the Western Roman Empire used it as its capital until its demise, and then the Germanic king Odoacle, the Ostrogothic king Theodorics, and the Byzantine Empire all made it the center of Italian rule.

An old man with silver hair and white beard wearing a broad sword at his waist, wearing a purple cloak, wearing silver armor, and riding a tall white horse, galloped from the street under the escort of dozens of knights, and dismounted in front of the Protector's Mansion. He is the master of the Protectorate's Mansion.

The title of the Protector of the Kingdom sounds like an ancient Chinese title of meritorious service, but in fact, there was also a Protector in the Western Roman Empire, who was known as the "last Roman" - Aetius.

Aetius, 57, born in 396 AD, was the main military commander at the end of the Western Roman Empire. The Roman Empire has always been known for its soldiers, and it has produced many famous generals and is invincible. But at the end of its period, the military shape plummeted, and there were repeated foreign invasions that threatened the survival of the country, and Rome urgently needed a good future to defend against foreign enemies and save the periphery, and Aetius was one of the last or two excellent Roman generals, and it can be said that without Aetius, the Western Roman Empire would have perished a few decades earlier.

Aetius's father's name was Gordontius, a horse all his life, from an ordinary officer to the commander of the cavalry of the Western Roman Empire by virtue of military merits, the cavalry at the end of the Western Roman Empire was engaged in reconnaissance and guarding the left and right flanks of the infantry corps, which had no big effect, and the main military force was still heavy infantry. The heavy cavalry in Europe is now only available in the Visigothic kingdom, and the feudal aristocratic knights will only appear after entering the Dark Ages of the Middle Ages, and now it is not the world of church knights, although the Roman Empire recognized Christianity as a legitimate sect, but it was only used to rule the people, and Christianity had little influence on the politics of the empire.

In 396 AD, the year after the division of the Roman Empire, Aetius was born, coinciding with the decline of the state. The military home and the frequent battles of that era led Aetius to join the military as a child, becoming the youngest warrior in the Roman army.

And this qiē was caused by the Huns, who drove all the barbarians in the north to the border of the Roman Empire, and these barbarians could only fight the autumn wind of the Roman Empire in order to survive, so the Roman Empire fought with these barbarians for many years. In 410 AD, the Visigothic leader Alaric led a barbarian army into the Eternal City --- Rome. And before that, Alaric had led his troops to fight several times in the territory of the Roman Empire, turning the Roman Empire upside down, this qiē is because the Huns occupied the northern forests and grasslands so that these barbarians have no place to live, so that they have to take risks to grab food from the Roman Empire, why do Westerners call the Hun king Attila and his Hun iron horsemen the whip of God? In addition to the horror of his military prowess and the fighting power of his army, it was also because Attila and his army were like God's whip driving these peoples away, causing the largest migration of peoples in history.

Aetius's father, Gordontius, as the military commander of a land, had to prevent the barbarians from invading his defenses, and he used various methods to negotiate a truce with the barbarian leaders. In order to gain the trust of the barbarian leader, Gordontius handed over the 16-year-old Aetius to the barbarians as a hostage. First with the Gothic Alaric who occupied northern Spain and southern Gaul, and after Alaric's death, he went to the camp of the Hun king Lujia in the Panosian Plain (present-day Hungary) as a hostage. It was with the Huns that he met the nephew of the king of the Huns, a short, dark-skinned figure with a large head, round eyes, a flat nose, and a few goatees under his chin--- Attila, who often met and had a good relationship like Guo Jing and Torrey in Jin Yong's novels, and no one thought that one day they would fight on the battlefield.

Similarly, Attila, as the nephew of the Hun king Lujia, was also sent to the Western Roman Empire as a hostage at the age of twelve. Both Attila and Aetius knew everything about each other and the other country.

Aetius returned to the army and in 425 he hired the Huns to participate in a coup d'état in the Roman Empire, but his supporters were defeated and killed before he could arrive, and he used the Hun army to get Valentinian III's mother and regent Platitia to forgive him and get him the position of commander of the soldiers in the province of Gaul. In Gaul, Aetius defeated the Visigoths at the Battle of Huar, forcing them to retreat to Aquitani. He then went to fortify the Rhine border and defeated the Germanic invasion at Norikum. In 430, he was appointed commander of both infantry and cavalry.

Emperor Valentinian III was a cowardly and hedonistic emperor who had to rely on Aetius to repel foreign enemies, so he was given the title of "Lord Protector", and from 433 to 450 he was the de facto ruler of the Western Empire. After gaining power, Aetius put all his body and mind on the border of defending the Western Empire, where there was an alarm to his military horses, where to point, in the end he and his best friend Attila, the king of the Huns, finally fought face to face on the battlefield, this battle was not won or lost, but in fact Attila lost, but Aetius did not send troops to hunt down Attila, because he wanted to keep Attila to deter those Germanic barbarians, if Attila died, then the Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, The Saxons would have turned their spearhead against the Western Roman Empire.

Judging from the experience of Aetius, he is not only a famous military strategist, but he is also a very outstanding political strategist, if he does not have political talents, how can he deal with those barbarian leaders and try to keep the Western Roman Empire from falling for decades? The tragedy of Aetius is that he did not manage his relationship with Emperor Valentinian III, which is a common occurrence in ancient China. It didn't matter when the emperor was young, but when the emperor got older, there was a problem, there was a contradiction in the relationship between the monarch and the minister, and Aetius's power was so great that almost everyone in the Roman Empire thought he was the emperor, so it was strange that he was not killed by the emperor!

The butler, who was standing at the door of the mansion, saw Aetius returning, and immediately led someone down the steps to salute: "Lord Duke, you can come back!" ”

Aetius handed the reins to the guard behind him and asked, "Where is he?" ”

The housekeeper said, "I have arranged for him to rest in the West Courtyard, do you want to see him now, or will you see him after resting?" ”

Aetius said, "Take him to my study at once!" ”

"Yes, sir!"

Aetius came home and washed up, he had just inspected several military camps around Ravenna, covered with dust and tiredness, after washing up, he changed into a satin gown, this Western-style dress had no sleeves, the hem hung down to the ankles, and he wore a white long-sleeved silk **, and after tidying up, he came to the study.

It wasn't long before the butler brought in a man who was Orlistes, and when he entered the study, he saluted, "My lord! ”

Aetius said with a solemn face, "Why did you come back suddenly?" Is something wrong? ”

Oristes nodded, "Yes, my lord, Attila died suddenly ten days ago!" Moreover, my true identity was also discovered, and I had to evacuate the Xiongnu royal court."

Aetius's face changed drastically: "What? You say Attila is dead? Did you do it? ”

"My lord, I didn't do it, and I don't have the ability to do it, after his death, shamans and wizards once examined his body, thinking that he drank too much alcohol and caused the rupture of his blood vessels, causing blood to flow into the trachea and causing suffocation, it is strange to say, on the night of Attila's death, the chief secretary Constantius was also killed by two of his guards, things are quite abnormal!"

Aetius didn't have the heart to care about how Attila died, if the Western Roman Emperor Valentine III and the Eastern Roman Emperor Marcian both wanted Attila to die, the last thing he wanted Attila to die was Aetius, because Aetius knew very well what Attila's death meant. This meant that not only would the Xiongnu Empire soon fall into civil strife, but also that other barbarian forces that had previously allied with the Western Roman Empire would soon target the Western Roman Empire.

Valentinus III was a waste, he didn't understand how much Attila's death had an impact on the pattern of Europe, how much danger it was to the Western Roman Empire, he only knew that after Attila's death, the Western Roman Empire did not have to worry about the invasion of the Hun Empire in a short time, but he forgot that other barbarians were still eyeing the land of the Western Roman Empire.

The strategy used by Aetius was to drive the tiger and devour the wolf, divide and disintegrate the alliance between the Germanic barbarians politically, and at the same time unite these barbarians militarily against the Xiongnu Empire, because the survival of the Xiongnu Empire was also dangerous to these barbarians, but as soon as Attila died, the biggest enemy of these barbarians was gone, and their enemy immediately became the Western Roman Empire.