The ceremony lasted until late at night.

In the early morning of the next day, Tianhao climbed the high platform erected in the square under the watchful eyes of everyone, and began his first public speech after ascending the throne in front of the amplification system made of a large number of iron microphones.

"Tribes have become history, like those things that are bound to disappear into the depths of time, leaving only a name."

"There is no eternal existence, only hope, a better future."

"Today, there are no more ethnic groups, no dragons, lions, tigers, eagles, pigs, deer, and other tribes, there is only a unified empire, the land of dragons."

With the shouts that echoed over the city, behind Tianhao, a brand-new huge banner slowly rose to the balcony in front of the palace in a full-scale stretch along the pre-set steel cables, with the coordination of several soldiers. Everyone saw its conspicuous red background, as well as the golden dragon with its scales and claws flying in the middle of the banner.

It has the mane of the lion, the horns of the deer, the claws of the tiger, the nose of the pig, the arms of the ox, and the wings of the eagle......

Countless pairs of eyes looked at this flag.

Some exclaimed, some muttered, some burst into tears, and some rejoiced.

"The gods are above, this ...... This is the legendary dragon? ”

"He didn't lie, he didn't abandon any tribe, all races can find their presence in this dragon."

"We are of the same race, and we are all brothers and sisters."

"Why didn't the previous king think of this earlier?"

"Long live the Emperor!"

Tianhao's loud voice continued.

"This is our world, and I will lead you all to a bright future. Here, I swear to everyone, including the gods, that I will never abandon the elderly and children, never bully women, and never give up any of my people. I will feed and clothe you, and let you get the happiness you have always dreamed of. Our country will become strong, and any adversary who dares to covet and be hostile to us will pay the price in blood! ”

"In the past long years, we guarded the lock dragon pass and did not take the initiative to go south. We are peace-loving, and every day we are generating new understandings of the world, as well as exploring. Our skin and hair are the most beautiful colors in the world, and we work our own land for a good harvest. We never wanted to enslave anyone, we never wanted to solve problems in the way of war. ”

"But not everybody thinks the same way we do." Tian Hao's tone changed sharply, and his tone became stern and cold: "In the south of the mainland, the white people have always regarded us as enemies. They have waged war after war, forcing us to spend a lot of resources to increase the strength of the defenses of the Lock Dragon Pass. Our children are skinny for this, and our women are unclothed for this, but the result of our hard and desperate resistance? But in exchange for white people to get worse again and again? Wars on a larger scale. ”

"They want us dead!"

"They treat ours like trophies. The whites treated the captives captured in the wars as wild beasts and forced them to fight for the death? Get bloody low-level pleasure out of it. Even our dead bodies are not spared? Whites dig bones out of corpses and polish them into strings of beads? Become a valuable ornament. ”

"Just the last time the war ended, they abused our women? Killing our children? robbing us of our wealth...... Can you tolerate and accept all this? ”

"Can't!" A veteran who had been wounded on the battlefield raised his arms and shouted, his face full of anger and fanaticism.

"We will not say yes! We will never be slaves! An old man roared hoarsely.

"Kill all the white people? Not a single one is left. "A middle-aged woman with a child in her arms muttered to herself? There was a raging fire in her eyes.

The shouting and roaring grew louder and louder, and then turned into a sonic tsunami that swept through the city.

Tianhao stood on the high platform, raised his hands, and solemnly declared: "I will lead you to glory and victory." ”

……

Two months later? The 1st and 2nd Legions crossed the fortress of Kamui and headed south along the road that the slaves had spent so much time building? The front was directed at Fort Radford.

The king still had not made a final decision on the question of economic and military priority, but the Marquis of Brackbarn did not waste time waiting. Under his arrangement? The first replenishment of the reserve soldiers, numbering up to 300,000, was intensively trained in several cities near the northern border. Mainly musketeers and artillerymen? There were only six thousand halberders.

The Marquis's idea cannot be said to be wrong? He believes that the next stage of the war has a good chance of being a defensive war. In the case of heavy losses among the coalition forces of the kingdom and the Holy See? It was not possible to regroup the army in a short time to attack the north again. Therefore, the Marquis of Brackbarn ordered that while the army was being trained, additional engineers and officers were sent to the major cities on the northern border to strengthen the existing walls and build fortifications at key points.

In fact, news from the northern border has always worried the Marquis of Brackbarn.

Since the beginning of the year, Moriente has been attacked by the northern giants. The savage creatures live in hundreds, targeting remote villages and towns. On the list that the Marquis of Brackbarn had at hand, the number of places attacked was growing every day, from large towns with more than a few thousand inhabitants to villages with a few hundred inhabitants. The damned northern giants never fought on a large scale, they usually attacked at night or in the early hours of the morning, and the local officials in Morient County could do nothing about it. They first gathered a force of 5,000 musketeers on the county side, and later increased the number to 8,000, but the battle was never successful.

The Northern Giants apparently have their own intelligence network and delivery system in Moriente. Every time the county received a call for help and sent out a main army, the northern giants would quickly flee before they arrived, leaving behind only the ruins of the ruined town and the corpses.

Brackbarn swears it's the meanest he's ever seen.

God knows exactly how many giants crossed the fortress of Kamui and entered the territory of Saxon. These damn guys never take the initiative to attack large cities, and they target sparsely populated villages and towns with poor garrisons. It would have been fine if the marauders had left behind the corpses of the villagers at the scene as many as they had been registered, but things had apparently not gone in the direction that the Marquis of Brackbarn had hoped———— and the villages and towns that had been breached would have left more or less corpses, but they were basically old men, women and children, and few were young and strong.

In the eyes of many people, villages and small towns are far less important than cities. This view is obviously too one-sided and arbitrary, especially in the eyes of a big man like the Marquis of Brackbarn, who wields power in the kingdom.

Looking at the issue at the national level is too complicated, and if it is narrowed down to Moriente, it is much simpler. Cities are the places with the highest concentration of populations and the largest numbers. However, the city itself lacks basic agricultural products and raw materials for production, and must be imported through the surrounding villages. Taking grain as an example, more than 90 percent of urban dwellers are not "grain producers" but consumers. Wheat, rice, rye, apples, and meat, with the exception of the few people who live on the fringes of the cities and own land, the vast majority of food can only be purchased in the market.

The relationship between cities and villages is actually the market and the supply side, and it is a normal circular framework for material production and consumption. On this basis, the state was established, and the king collected taxes through various transactions of the people, and then recast the money collected and filled it into the foundation of the kingdom.

This is the last thing Brackbar wants to see. If a city is attacked, there is a high probability that the attackers will be repulsed or even surrounded and annihilated. The county of Moriente is far from the fortress of Shenwei, which is already the direct administration of the Saxon kingdom. Since there was no news of a large-scale invasion by the northern giants at the border checkpoints, it meant that there were not many giants in the county of Morente, and at most some roving bandits. Although the giants have the advantage in size and strength, as long as they take the initiative to attack the heavily guarded and well-defended cities, the Marquis is confident that these bold men will pay the price.

When a village is attacked or a small town, the meaning is very different. That meant that grain, cheese, fat, meat, and other goods that were originally used to supply the city were looted, and more importantly, there was no stable supply and collection point. Although Morente County has 6,000 soldiers concentrated in the main city, and reinforcements are still coming from all over the country, this military force can only defend with the city as the core most of the time, and it is difficult or even impossible to carry out mobile counterattacks.

The northern giants had a wide range of attacks, and even a nobleman with considerable military talent such as the Marquis of Brackbarn would have a hard time finding their next target on the map. Over the past two weeks, 37 towns and villages in northern and eastern Morente have been looted, with tens of thousands of villagers being taken captive, along with large quantities of grain and bread, all the large livestock, and a staggering amount of local stockpiles.

The Saxons have always had a tradition of baking bread every three months. This has become the best embodiment of the concentrated labor of all people in the village (town) and helping each other in the process. The bread is round and usually fifty centimeters in diameter. Salted dough is sent to the oven and then placed on a wooden rack to dry. This bread does not contain moisture when cooked, is dry and hard, and can be kept for a long time.

The Saxons have a proverb: to know if a person is industrious, just look at whether his storehouse is full of bread.

This is a vital staple food, and in some ways bread is even more important than flour, as well as cereals.

When he received news of the northern giants' heading south, the Marquis of Brackbarne led his guards to Morente County and personally surveyed several looted villages and towns.

The bakeries of all the local households were destroyed by the fire, and many charred black residues scattered on the ground were identified as bread. The amount is staggering, and it can be seen that the local villagers have abundant grain reserves, but the northern giants are obviously not robbery in the simple sense, and the reason why they set fire to these grain reserves is to prevent those who come after them from being replenished.

No carcasses of large animals such as pigs and cattle were found at the scene, but many feathers and internal organs of poultry were left. This is a common practice after the army has conquered a certain place: all the birds are slaughtered in a crude and simple way, directly cutting off the head, plucking the feathers, and removing the internal organs...... The whole process can be completed in a few minutes, and then the surface of the cleaned chickens and ducks is smeared with salt, and the centralized storage and transportation are carried away.

No cheese, ham, bacon, sausages, not even hay and fodder were found.

Looking at the miserable corpses, the Marquis of Brackbarn felt cold in his hands and feet. He was well aware that this was not plunder in the ordinary sense of the word, but a precursor to the subsequent large-scale war of the northern giants.

The only thing that is uncertain is time. The interval may be short, only one or two months, or as long as a year or two.

Villages and small towns were destroyed, and nearby cities were directly affected. The most obvious change is the rise in prices, as the supply of goods from villages and towns has plummeted, leaving urban dwellers unable to buy anything even if they have money. In the case of the most common brown bread, the price of one and a quarter of a penny per kilogram has risen from last week to now, which is equivalent to a thirty per cent increase from the previous price.

These giants from Kamui Fortress won't stop there. Whether it is killing or robbing, it becomes addictive and becomes a habit. Especially the latter, many valuables in the process of looting will become the personal property of soldiers, leading them to have a lot of interest in robbery and murder, as well as a strong sense of anticipation.

The Marquis of Brackbarne mobilized 20,000 soldiers into the county town of Morente to bolster the county's military strength. Combined with the original army and reinforcements, the total strength of Moriente County will exceed 32,000 by next week at the latest.

The kingdom is a game of chess, and Brackbar has a lot to juggle, and he can't concentrate all his energy on Moriente, and he has to deal with the problems caused by the different ideologies between the king and the chancellor as soon as possible before the northern giants go south en masse.

Baron Hutson arrived at the city of Morente with 20,000 musketeers.

It was a well-equipped, well-trained force, with an overall combat strength index far superior to that of the stragglers in Morente who had been recruited from all over the country on an ad hoc basis. Viscount Cohen was greatly satisfied, and entertained the members of the officer corps, including Baron Hartson.

This would have been a cause for rejoicing, and then after three rounds of drinking, the two sides quarreled over the use of the army itself.

Baron Hartson was a faithful enforcer of the orders of the Marquis of Blackbarn. He confessed that according to the Marquis's instructions, the 20,000 soldiers would take the city of Moriente as the core, spread out as many scouts as possible, and move back and forth between the villages in the county in the form of one man and two horses.