Chapter Seventy-Three

Dehrim was completely closed. ()

Now except for the soldiers, who are allowed to enter and leave the city, the rest of the personnel are not allowed to enter. The ban was made possible by the terrible news that the Emperor had died.

A few nights earlier, a group of mourning messengers had secretly entered Dehrim. Soon, the news spread among high-ranking officers. The mourning messenger wanted the high officials of Dehrim to speak to him, and these were some of the officials who had recently been promoted to the position by the controversial order of Haraus, who were quick to express to him that they would be "loyal to Haraus until the empire is stabilized."

The messenger left satisfied. The city began to be busy preparing, and the atmosphere suddenly became tense.

Soldiers were no longer allowed to leave their garrisons at night to drink in the streets; Residents were not allowed to peddle small goods around the barracks; And Stellant could no longer easily enter and exit that garden, because the number of soldiers stationed there had multiplied.

Now they don't know anything about the soldiers outside, the officers and soldiers inside the city.

The officers and soldiers did not know what the people outside the city thought, and all kinds of suspicions permeated the soldiers. Some people feel that there will be a reconciliation soon, although Fiderick must have done something bad, but now that the emperor has died, then the prince is still the most orthodox heir--- even if the propaganda of the previous period has made people pray in their hearts that Prince Fiderick will never become emperor.

At this time, only a few people in the various capitals knew about the emperor's death.

Haraus informed only a few officials who he thought could be used by him, and most of them, upon hearing of the Emperor's death, expressed their support for Haraus's efforts to take control of the Empire.

Stellant had been closely monitoring the situation in the city for some time, and after the city was highly closed, he no longer expected Tracy to return. But one day, Tracy, covered in stinky mud, suddenly appears in front of Stellant. He climbed into the city through the sewers built by the Zenda people and brought with him a ring from the Prince.

Stellant tells Tracy to wash himself and burn the clothes off his body.

After Tracy was ready, he told Sdelant about the situation outside the city. Stellant soon heard a completely different version of the story: the prince served his country on the front lines, but Harlaus, who was in charge of the flank cover, left the garrison soon after the campaign began, and blocked the Suno Avenue and the Uxhall docks, and after the prince went south, he imposed martial law on the city of Deherim and did not allow the prince to enter.

Tracy also said that the eastern officers and soldiers outside the city did not look like soldiers preparing to enter the city and loot, and most of them, although they were now a little irritable and irritated, were clearly not prepared to prepare for a rebellion. And two soldiers were stripped naked by their commander for insulting a farmer's daughter and marched through the barracks, and the soldiers around them laughed.

Stellant was in a trance when he heard this, and it was estimated that only the guys in the Eastern Army would do such a thing. Other armies generally did not bother with the peasants when they encountered a dispute, or at most gave the farmer a jar or two of cream or half a horse of cloth and blasted away.

Finally, the prince told Sdelander to tell the officers and soldiers in the eastern part of the city to take care of their own safety, and to cooperate as much as possible with the officials from the capital in this case, because the prince believed that 'the misunderstanding would soon pass, and that once he was in power, everything would be fine'.

These words added to Sdeland's worries: the prince was thinking about his own accession to the throne in the future. The prince didn't know that now those Eastern officers and soldiers had been put under house arrest, and they didn't even have a chance to cooperate.

The officers of the Eastern Army might not have been so ostracized by Haraus simply because they were the leaders of the Eastern Army. The point is that when Harlaus watched the prince reorganize the Eastern Army, a large number of officers and soldiers who were bewitched by heresies such as pioneers entered the Eastern Army one after another, which made Harlaus feel very worried.

In the hearts of the great lords, the program of the pioneers is really terrifying, according to that program, the lords of this world will be eliminated in two or three generations. What will the lord do then? To farm or to go into business?

What is equal, what is redistributed according to ability, this is all nonsense. When the ancestors of the lords followed the founders of the empire to climb mountains and wade through rivers and charge into battle, what were the ancestors of those commoners doing? Those people grew food comfortably in their fields, and were able to drink water and eat warm food every day, while the ancestors of the lords were shivering in the snow and terrified by the bitter war. Now, the descendants of those civilians have jumped up and demanded a redivision of the country? Do they have the qualifications?

The lords thought so.

The lords don't mind the empire asking them to improve the quality of life of their lords, because some scholars have found through research that if the lords are better cared for, the more they will produce, and the more they will bring more and more rewards to their lords.

This notion has taken root in the minds of the people, including the most stubborn lords, who are not guilty of living with their farm income, and are honestly happy to make concessions. But if this concession crosses their bottom line, and even says that they are to be put on the same footing as the illiterate farmers who only bathe once every six months, they will resolutely oppose it.

These lords vividly remember a few times in the impoverished province of Uxhall, where a large group of peasants, in the name of God, demanded reform, took control of several towns in the mountains, and established a so-called 'empire of God'. It took five years for the 'Empire' to be wiped out by an Imperial patrol. The peasants executed a number of lords, but soon they found themselves at a loss for the complicated accounts, so they had to appoint a remnant of the lords to join them, and soon the lords climbed to the top of their government, and in a panic, the peasants began a great purge, and cleaned the lords, after which the local lords did not dare to cooperate with them, and a large number of lords fled with their families from the place where they had lived for generations, and then brought in an army to exterminate them. The Empire'.

Now, the lords thought to themselves, these pioneers were doing the same thing. The pioneers wanted to build a larger 'empire'. The lords had always scoffed at the pioneers' claims that their overseas city-states were rich and vibrant. If you have a good life overseas, why come back? It's definitely that the continent of Calradia is better than the outside.

Speaking of Dehrim, it may be that the only people in the city who are willing to go out of the city to help Prince Fredrik are those officers of the Eastern Army, and if they hadn't been excluded from the affairs of Decheng in the first place, it is really hard to say whether they would stand firmly opposite Harlaus.

Very often, the enemy is self-made. At least this time, Harlaus pushed a lot of his potential partners against himself.

Stellant saw only a part of the officers in the garden, and they generally felt that their future was bleak, and although they did not think that they would be in any great trouble, they generally felt that their future was ruined. Moreover, they felt that once the emperor died, all positions would change greatly, and being excluded from the military and political core at this time was equivalent to years of hard work in vain.

When Stellant came to see the officers, they even suspected that he had been sent by the occupying forces to find out the news. Some have suggested that Stellant would be willing to cooperate if they could introduce them to the occupying forces; Others scoffed at Stellant, believing him a traitor to the Eastern Army.

For the different attitudes of these people, Sdelant is silently observing, and keeping in mind.

All Sdelant could do now was comfort the officers, and soon things would become clear, and there would be no need to be too angry. Obviously, this comfort didn't do much.

And now that the news of the Emperor's death has been confirmed, more and more officers and soldiers are aware of it, and many of them are being asked to swear allegiance to Haraus. What was disturbing was that the defenders of the city suddenly became extremely nervous, and they were very worried that the people outside the city would unite with the comrades in the city and start a rebellion at some point.

Many of the higher-ranking officers of the occupying forces were worried, while their subordinates were not. There are many junior officers who are clamoring for a preemptive strike, these people do not have much political burden, they need opportunities and turmoil, only then can they get the opportunity to be promoted.

Many of the junior officers petitioned to deal with the Eastern Army's henchmen, and then ordered those outside the city to return to the Frost Castle, otherwise it would be regarded as a rebellion. In order to hide their uneasiness, the officers and men described Prince Fiderick as a traitor who had committed the most heinous crimes, and hoped to create even greater discontent so that more people would have the same attitude as themselves.

Stellant roughly guessed what was going on in the imperial capital from the intensive meetings held during this period of time, and he didn't have much affection for the emperor, but now, he really didn't want the emperor to die like this, because the mess left by the emperor was easy to spoil. Durant is still trying his best to help people inside and outside the city reconcile, but the tension in the city is getting stronger day by day, and the people outside the city have run out of patience, this situation is beyond the scope of Strant's ability, he can't control the overall situation now, what he can do now is to try to protect those Eastern Army officers.

Bands of soldiers began to walk from the camp inside the city to the walls, the curfew began, and food became rationed.

One morning, people outside the city began to beat the war drums, and the sound of thumping reached the city. Everyone, including the residents and soldiers, was shocked to hear the noise, almost as if they had already begun to attack the people outside the city.

Later, Stellant learned that outside the city, an army had appeared from the direction of Suno, and that army approached the soldiers of the Eastern Army outside the city from the side, and that army stopped after entering the warning range of the Eastern Army outside the city.

An emissary read an edict in front of everyone, the last order from the Emperor.

The messenger's words were repeated aloud by a group of heralds, making sure that everyone could hear them.

Prince Frederick will soon know the fruits of the months of Sir Harlaus's disappearance.

"On the occasion of my death, I can look without guilt at my years of work for the Empire'I need to entrust the Empire to a trustworthy man''Fidel''' Fiderick's character and ability are not enough to sustain this Empire, but Sir Harlaus has shown himself to be competent in a series of tasks'The Empire will be inherited by Harlaus' 'The Emperor of Swadia himself''''

This order was tied to an arrow and shot into the city, into the prince's barracks.

There was jubilation inside the city, and there was dead silence outside the city.

Soon, while Stellant was still listening appreciatively to the officers and soldiers around him congratulating him on the right thing to do with Harlaus, a herald shouted along the road:

"The Eastern Army Siege of the Eastern Army"