My grandfather was imprisoned in the castle for a month, and for half a month he could not eat, and in the last two days the guards disappeared, and the shouts of killing outside became louder and louder. One night, the skylight of the prison cast a strong light, a beating light, and there was a fire outside! The next morning, while my grandfather was sitting in prison, a squad of soldiers broke in and smashed the locks. Drink to: "Who is your master?" ”

Grandfather said: "The ruler of the empire." "The soldiers took him and sent him to an outpost, and a grain transport officer, having brought the rations to the front, took his grandfather back to the camp on the way back, where his grandfather's identity was confirmed. In fact, his grandfather did not know about the tragedy in the valley at that time, which made him the last lord to defect to the Northern Army, and people called him the lord of Rhodok's defection, but his grandfather did not admit it, he only said that he was a lord from South Swadia.

My grandfather was undoubtedly a good example, and the first king gave him a land with springs, where there were 900 acres of mature fields, and there were large uncultivated wastelands around it. The king told him that there were 100 peasants, that the village belonged to a knight who had just died in battle, and that all his grandfather had to do was to drive away the widow and his three daughters who he had left behind, and then give half of the peasants to the king. At the same time, during the battle, the grandfather was free to capture the enemy, who would later be his serfs and let him take them back to the territory, according to the law of Swadia, "You can do whatever you want on your own land." ”

Apparently, the Swadias never considered the Rhodoks to have this right in the south, and in their view, the Rhodoks were just a group of outsiders who occupied the imperial lands. And now, outsiders have become enemies, and the southerners have no rights in the land of Rhodok, oh no, South Swadia.

The war continued, and for a time the soldiers of the former kings occupied almost all the southern cities and castles, where they enacted new laws. However, the king soon discovered that his power could not extend beyond the city during the day, and that a large area of land was still in the hands of the Rhodoks, who were ready to "fight until the last bamboo spear remained"; At night, Rhodok's influence seeped into the city, and every day there were lonely, drunken soldiers killed in the streets and their equipment looted. The rulers of the empire were greatly distressed, their power was so great that it was easy to defeat the ridiculous armament of the Rhodoks on a frontal battlefield. But in this mountainous area, the increasingly cunning travelogue tactics of the Rhodoks left the well-armed soldiers of the north with nothing to do.

At that time, a northern clerk recorded the situation of the occupying forces: "Our lines of communication are destroyed every day, and the soldiers in some strongholds often do not get supplies for half a month, and they can only come out and rob the local villagers on their own, which makes their image disappear. They could not find food in all the villages, it was hidden. If they insist on grabbing it, they can only get some scraps of cold rice, which they have to pull out of the women's cupboards. As soon as they were gone, the Yusvadians informed the guerrillas that their crossbows were better than ours, and they often fired a sporadic burst of arrows in the woods 200 paces away, wounding five or six soldiers, and then vanished without a trace. We couldn't find them in the woods in the mountains. Wounded soldiers often need to be cared for by two or three people alone, and these people are exhausted, often ambushed on the next swamp or river beach, and the snowball is getting bigger and bigger. The Yugoslavs were not stupid, and after learning the dangers of frontal combat at the beginning, they chose the travelogue approach. And they shrewdly do not kill our soldiers, but let them be wounded, often a wounded soldier can consume a month's worth of medicine and more food for nine soldiers in a week, and at the same time, his companions are distracted to take care of him. So that as time goes on, our soldiers get more and more tired... They were eager for a decisive battle, but the Yuswadians sang and laughed at us in the woods a few hundred meters away. When our patrol arrived... There is no one... Only the occasional arrow... It sucks, we want to go home······"

The exhausted occupying forces first abandoned worthless fortresses, fortresses, and burned them clean, and then moved to larger strongholds closer to the lines of communication. The price of this is that the empire is equivalent to abandoning all production bases in the south, and in that case, why should they take the cities? When cities lost contact with their affiliated villages, these cities lost their ability to replenish themselves, so in order to maintain the operation of the cities, the empire had to travel thousands of miles from the north to the south, and it was difficult to transport supplies, which was fatal to the empire. The burghers and farmers of the north soon discovered that the war had not reduced their taxes, but had made them heavier. At this time, the spies in the south spread a lot of rumors, which led people to believe that the war was simply a conspiracy of the northern government, and that they started the war in order to get more income, and that the northern and southern Svadians were of the same roots, but they were provoked to fight each other. And now, in fact, there is no war in the south, but the empire always says that the war is still going on at home, in fact, it is just a plan by a few adults in the military department to accumulate money.

In order to maintain the situation in the south, the empire had to continuously raise tax rates. The peasants were supposed to pay 5 dinars a year, then 7, then 17; Merchants used to implement a tax rate of 10 draws at a time, but now it has become 5 draws; The wages of the citizens were cut from 164 a year to 120, then to 100, and then the government directly mortgaged them with low-quality food, much to the anger of the accustomed citizens.

The mothers and wives in the rear sent new parcels, and Shun was entrusted with a messenger to bring a message, "The house is in a mess", which caused an uproar among the soldiers.

They questioned why the state was taxing their families heavily when they were working for their country on the front lines. When the king learned of this, he was furious and ordered the letters to be burned and the messengers to be executed. The soldiers told the king that if he did so, they would flee en masse to the South. Then the soldiers gave the messenger a large sum of money that day to escort him out of the barracks. The king was furious and ordered the soldiers who were leading the way to be put to death. The soldiers were put in wooden cages, but the cages were opened at night. The next day the soldiers told the king, "It's a shame, the prisoners have been snatched away by the Rhodoks," and the king looked deeply at the soldiers, and said helplessly: "Well, this is the end of the matter, and I hope you will not be taken away by the Rhodoks." ”

Over the next six months or so, the occupying forces found that the Rhodok attack had become more advanced and retreating, and at one point they even captured a castle in a dense infantry formation of the Swadians. The king joked, "It seems that the Rhodoks have stolen the good things." ”

Later, what Swadia scholars called the "senseless war" began, and the Rhodok organization became more resilient. Along some roads, formations of soldiers often crossed the lines of communication to attack the supply lines of the occupying forces, leaving the Swadias at the observation posts stunned. When the patrol arrived, they saw the soldiers of the supply team being hanged from a tree on the side of the road, and the wheat, cloth, and medicine were scattered everywhere on the road, and the horses were all taken unless they were dead.

When Rhodok's guerrillas began to merge and train into a regular army, the opportunity for a decisive battle that the occupying forces had hoped for at first came. However, at this time, the occupying forces no longer had the same vigor as when they went out on the expedition, and their military forces were scattered and their confidence was lacking. Now, even leaving the castle and going out on routine patrols is a difficult task for them.

The number of formed regiments of the Rhodok is said to have exceeded 1,000 men, and they were supported by guerrillas of about 3,000~4,000 men, who you could not tell the difference between them and the peasants, who leveled the land in the morning, raised geese, and brought back a few buckets of cold water from the creek to drink the animals. Then he took a rusty scythe out of his barn, dressed in a simple outfit, and became a warrior before the sun went down in the afternoon. There are a large number of such people, and they do some things every day to set fires and catch orders. They became more and more skilled in doing these things, and some of them were so tired of the farm work that they left everything and went to the regular army of Rhodok. This has allowed Rhodok's armed forces to be in an extremely healthy state of development for a long time.

The Battle for the Reconquest of Aaron was a battle that Rhodoc later called the Battle of the Founding of the State. Three months before the war, the citizens of the city received some kind of news and began an organized evacuation to the countryside. When the empire found out, the population had plummeted by a quarter, and the experienced general was immediately alert to the possible danger, and he wrote a letter to warn the officers of the occupation army headquarters in Viruga, but his letter was delayed on the road, and it was half a month late before the letter was opened by the lord of Viruga, who immediately sent 700 infantry and 400 archers to the west along the official road, all the way to merge the strongholds on the road, and rush to Aaron.

On the eve of the ascent to Aaron's heights, they took in Aaron's fleeing soldiers, and the soldiers were completely demoralized and dejected: "Aaron is lost. More than 1,000 reinforcements were outside the city discussing countermeasures, and in the process, deserters continued to enter the camp under the guidance of scouts sent by the reinforcements. The next morning, the chief master officer of the reinforcements saw the flag of the commander of the garrison of Aaron, which was in tatters. From Chief Aaron's mouth he knew that a month earlier, Aaron had been surrounded, and countless Rhodoks seemed to have come out of the ground. They were well prepared and let go like rain, the cavalry were shot dead as soon as they opened the city gates and charged, and the fallen knights and out-of-control horses made a mess of the entire cavalry ranks, which were soon driven back to the city. The Rhodocs fired arrows day and night, and the entire perimeter of Aaron was shot like a hedgehog. People are carrying the door panels out of the house. After losing a small half of the soldiers, the lack of personnel made the curfew a dead letter, and finally, the people of the city attacked Aaron's east gate and set it on fire. Seeing the signal, the Rhodoks gathered their ranks and swarmed in, and the street fighting lasted for 2 days. At this time, news of the arrival of reinforcements came from the city. At this time, it was impossible to clear the enemy army from Aaron, and the commander of the garrison had to lead the remaining 1,000 soldiers to break through.

"How many Rhodok soldiers did Aaron have?"

"A lot, poorly equipped, but a lot of people." This was the entire conversation between the commander of the reinforcements and the people in the garrison command.

For immediately there were trumpets sounding everywhere telling them that the Rhodoks, who had taken possession of Aaron, had come to steal camp by night. There was no moonlight that night, and the oil-drenched rockets were shot out, faintly reflecting the soldiers all over the mountains. The Rhodoks sang a hymn, written by a priest who had witnessed the tragedy of the valley. The desperation and anger contained in these lyrics made every Rhodok in the darkness a vengeful saint, and every Swadian who couldn't see clearly ahead trembled.

The master chief ordered the torch to be lit, and a few tens of meters around the camp were lit to prevent anyone from approaching. But this approach would have been foolish for the Rhodoks, who had a large number of archers. They vividly remember how in the valley a few years ago, the enthusiastic farmers were robbed of their courage by the rain of arrows. Now every soldier who dared to move in the bright camp was a living target, and the bows and arrows were so dense that they were like the wind blowing, and the generals of Svadia sent their soldiers out of the camp to line up, but the soldiers were afraid, and the dense rain of arrows in the darkness was more terrible than anything else. It was raining, which somewhat alleviated the harshness of the arrow rain. The soldiers rallied under the shouts and curses of the officers, waiting for dawn to prepare for a breakthrough. The next day, Rhodok's messenger entered the camp and said that as long as the soldiers laid down their weapons and took off their equipment, then they guaranteed that the soldiers would leave Aaron safely. The general refused. But he did not prevent his soldiers from doing so.

Finally, the decisive battle began. But this was not what the Svadians had imagined a few years ago, with heavy infantry pressing the enemy's lines, archers disrupting enemy positions, and cavalry harvesting enemy weak points. No, it was just a general who was ready to die for the Empire and his more than 200 loyal guards faced the tide of Rhodoks.

The Rhodoks disarmed more than 2,000 people, armed more than 4,000 with them, and sent the general's head with wax seals to Viruga.

After that, it's the history we are familiar with. The Rhodoks are only one-third of the population of the Svadians, but after all, in the land of Rhodok, the Rhodoks have an absolute advantage over the Swadia expeditionary force in numbers. The Rhodoks, who had occupied Aaron, grew incomparably stronger, and the innumerable number of workers, blacksmiths, and leathermen in the developed handicraft cities; Countless iron, leather, and even ready-made weapons quickly changed the equipment of the Rhodok army. Now they look more like the army of a country than the armament of a certain lord. The Svadians soon discovered that the Rhodoks had had enough of their equipment, and they developed an extreme desire for equipment: they made their shields thick and large, and they wore armor all over their bodies. Hiding behind their shields, they advanced slowly but surely, liberating the cities and villages of Rhodoc along the way.

In Viruga, the lords of Rhodok held talks with the commander of the occupation forces in Swadia, the former emperor. In the end, Svadia agreed to withdraw from the mountains, but hoped to form a federation with Rhodok, the Federation of Greater Svadia, or call Rhodok South Swadia, and in the future, it will always be a brotherly country, unified taxation, unified defense.

The lords of Rhodoc smirked, "It's not been three years now. If you want to sign it, you can join the Great Rhodok Alliance, called North Rhodok, and in the future, you will always be a brotherly country, unify taxes, and unify defense. ”

The first king was furious and almost broke the contract on the spot. However, several advisors told the king that if the treaty was broken, the Rhodoks might enter the plains and invade north. Eventually, in that year, the occupying forces signed a treaty and left the mountains in despair, and at this time, the expeditionary force of 10,000 men at its peak saved less than 6,000 men, and their morale was low, and then they were crushed on the northern coast, and in the eastern desert they were unable to resist the nomads beyond the mountain passes, and my grandfather said that their will was exhausted in the years in the mountains.