Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War

After careful planning, Belisarius bypassed Jeanne Dacre and some local nobles, and directly organized two battalions of soldiers without telling them, and led these soldiers to attack the camp of the most restless barbarian at night.

The barbarians were not very vigilant and disciplined, and they were used to the fact that the Romans would not cross the border to reach their territory, so they had almost no vigilance. When the Romans' spears and arrows shot into the camp, they reacted, but it was too late.

The night attack plus the difference in military literacy resulted in a completely one-sided result. Belisarius easily controlled more than a thousand people in the camp, and then he crucified the family of the tribal leader, and demoted many of the tribal leaders to slaves and sold them to the empire. If nothing unexpected happened, they would never be able to return to Britain in this life.

As for the remaining barbarians, Belisarius dispersed them and sent them to the Gaul province, allowing them to develop locally and integrate into the Celtic group in Gaul.

Relatively speaking, Belisarius is a kind and moral person. Even Procopius, who likes to criticize people in his books, mainly attacks his emotional life for being too tolerant and restrained, and does not criticize him much in this regard. But being kind and moral does not mean being a saint. He can still do some things that seem cold-blooded at first glance when necessary. For example, during the Nika riot in history, he was the king's guard and it is said that he killed tens of thousands or even more mobs (some say it is 35,000, and the author personally doubts the authenticity of this number). Many records use words such as "massacre" when describing this period of history.

This is probably the reason why kindness cannot lead the army. People with true saintly hearts rarely lead troops to fight. War itself is a cruel thing. Kindness to the enemy is not necessarily a good thing, but will only cause a lot of extremely troublesome things.

After solving the main culprit, Belisarius did not stop, but continued to kill several other barbarian tribes that crossed the border. During this period of silence, he was not sleepwalking and eating dry food. He had already figured out the details of the other party by various means.

Due to the lag in the spread of information in tribal society and Belisarius' strong purposefulness, before the locals could react, Belisarius killed the tribes that frequently plundered the Romans and forced them out of the British province by force, actually breaking up and destroying their tribes.

This move caused an uproar in the British province. Not only Boudica had a lot of opinions about him, but even Jeanna and others had some complaints. Belisarius ignored all these opinions and just repeatedly reiterated and insisted on his own views.

Jeanna understood him a little bit because she had done her best to curb the conflict between the two sides. She knew how difficult it was to get these barbarian tribes to listen to advice and do business with the Romans. She couldn't blame Belisarius because it was indeed the locals who took action first and the Romans fought back later. She also knew how the Romans normally dealt with such problems, which was definitely more radical than Belisarius.

So she basically kept silent about this matter, but continued to do her best to prevent the war from happening.

Boudica was furious. She repeatedly emphasized her indignation in her letters and even threatened to mobilize the tribe to have a good argument with the Romans.

In the end, she still couldn't make up her mind to really go to war with the Romans, because although her vision was limited, she also knew that there was no need to fight now. The Romans now seemed to have no desire for their land and had no interest in establishing rule on their land. This contradiction between the two sides could be reconciled.

Not only that, there was another key point - she had fully witnessed Belisarius's command ability and the military strength of the Romans. They couldn't deal with the Anglo-Saxons alone, let alone the Romans who conquered the two. Although they claimed to have an army of 100,000 or 200,000, they might not be able to defeat a reorganized legion stationed here.

The situation in history was the same. A large number of Celtic tribal warriors faced a legion, and the result was described by historians as a "massacre". It was definitely not a good idea for them to fight the Romans head-on.

Boudica's concession led to her impeachment within the tribal assembly, and her authority and power declined. This gave some other tribal leaders an opportunity. To be frank, the tribal assembly was just a loose alliance. The leader had no clear power. His authority and status depended on the recognition of other leaders. Once the recognition was lost, Boudica would change from the leader of the alliance to an ordinary leader of a large tribe.

Several other tribal leaders took the opportunity to rise by inciting opposition. They instigated various tribes to rise up against the Romans. Many tribes did recognize this approach and really began to mobilize and prepare for war.

They also understood the basic logic of making friends with distant countries and attacking nearby ones. They tried to get in touch with the Franks on the other side of the continent, hoping to get some supplies and military assistance from King Charles. However, this behavior was not as difficult as before, because the Romans were gradually mastering the ocean.

The joining of Rollo and the surrender of Ivar have shifted the balance of power. In addition, when Orville and Tia were governors respectively, they also made great efforts to expand the navy. Now only scattered Viking pirates can harass the coastline, and large-scale fleets have no way to get close to the coastline. It is extremely difficult to transport weapons to the Celtic barbarians on a large scale, let alone send troops up.

This behavior also touched the bottom line of the Romans: before, whether they looted or resisted, the Romans saw it as a barbarian problem. They had seen many examples of emotional disturbances and barbaric customs and culture, and they would not get angry.

But now that the Franks were involved, the nature of the matter changed completely. The Franks were the most direct enemy of the empire. Eight legions were deployed on the Germanic defense line to guard against these people. Colluding with the Franks was a typical example of "their hearts are worth killing" in the eyes of many Roman soldiers, so Belisarius simply ordered the entire army to assemble at the western border and asked for help from the Governor of Lugden Gaul, and was also ready to fight.

Now the most sober person who tried to get both sides to lay down their arms was Boudica. She did her best to restrain her tribe and other small tribes from participating in the war, and also angrily rebuked the tribal leaders who advocated war at the tribal meeting, but all this was a drop in the bucket and could not stop the gears of war at all.

PS. There are two more chapters to be posted later. There was an accident yesterday. I will make up for it tomorrow at the latest.