Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War

The situation in the Nubian Kingdom was generally good. The prince that Orville had met before had now successfully succeeded to the throne and became the new king, and was exercising his rule.

At the critical moment of the transition between the old and the new, the Aksumites from the south once again attacked and began to invade their territory, making Nubia's situation somewhat dangerous. At this time, the Nubian king naturally remembered the agreement between himself and the Egyptians and asked Cleopatra to send troops to support him.

The problem is that Cleopatra now has only a few troops in her hands, and it is difficult to maintain local security, let alone go out to defend against enemies.

Although there are relatively few examples of black countries that have been strong and prosperous in history, Aksum is indeed one of them. They will be the so-called Ethiopians in the future. Their history is longer than most civilizations in the world. It is no problem to call themselves an ancient civilization. Moreover, they are indeed very capable and have some dominance at sea.

Faced with the difficulties from such a country, Orville didn't waste any words. After discussing with Cleopatra, he ordered a legion to be transferred to quell the incident and let them be stationed in the Nubian territory to keep an eye on the Aksumites on the opposite side.

This is a sure win for Orville. To be fair, he doesn't want to care about the affairs in the south now. After returning from Rome, the changes in Rome City have involved too much of his mind. From his point of view, the affairs in the south can be dealt with now. In fact, the Nubians alone are enough to withstand the Aksumites. The Romans just don't want to lose too many people. Orville also doesn't want to waste the lives of elite soldiers in the upper reaches of the Nile.

So he thought of a way that seemed to have the best of both worlds, to let the soldiers go directly to prepare for the stationing. If the other party was worried that the Romans would stay in the local area, then the legion could take this opportunity to take care of things less. If the other party agreed, the Romans would not lose much, and they could increase their influence and control in the local area, while weakening the prestige of the Nubian king.

After all, it is difficult for a king who cannot protect himself and needs external forces to get full support, and the public's recognition is likely to shift to the Romans.

Due to the gap in national strength, the Romans can easily take advantage in exchanges between countries. After all, they can easily use their power to suppress others, and the other party has no ability to bargain. This is also a helpless move for the Nubians, and they don't have much room for choice.

——

According to Orwell's plan, Egypt should have about 20,000 new-style troops to cope with various situations. Now this number is barely half achieved. If the army is expanded with a militaristic attitude, this number is actually not a problem at all. It is not impossible for this place to support 60,000 or 70,000 professional troops.

But before that, Orwell plans to solve some other problems first, and then talk about other things after the financial resources are settled. He wants to let the locals feel a little benefit and recognize his and Cleopatra's rule before slowly expanding the army.

Sorting out the various financial inputs, the main options for increasing revenue are nothing more than these: increasing agricultural output by building water conservancy facilities, repairing roads to collect customs fees and commercial taxes, obtaining trade profits through trade with southern countries, and collecting tariffs through maritime trade.

These options are not contradictory, but the focus is definitely on tariffs and maritime trade. Anyone who sees a profit margin of more than 20 times will be jealous. After discarding the part that is handed over, there will still be a lot left. He has also made preliminary preparations. The Nabataeans have already surrendered. His main commercial enemies on this side of the Red Sea are the Aksumites and other dark-skinned peoples and the Arabs in Yemen.

Orville started to build a navy after the fire in Alexandria a few years ago. Fortunately, there are not a few fishermen and sailors in Egypt, and some Greek officers also have relatively impressive naval experience. With the help of Pliny the Elder, Orville has built a Red Sea fleet with impressive paper parameters.

Then he ordered the Nabataeans to assist them in patrolling the Red Sea. Once they found that ships flying the flags of countries such as Rome and Egypt were attacked, they would retaliate against the fleet.

At this time, he hardly considered the economic account, and didn't care so much about the loss of ships and materials. The core concept was only one - those who made mistakes had to pay with blood. Only this kind of bloody lesson could make the surrounding pirates remember that they should not provoke Roman merchant ships casually.

In terms of familiarity with the sea and the skills of sailing on the sea, the other side was not necessarily worse than his side. Most of the people on Orwell's side were sailors rather than sailors, but their national strength was strong enough. They could pile up people to death when facing a pile of pirates, and they were willing to spend money to clean up these unstable factors. After a month or two of security war, the situation was much better than before.

The Aksumites were busy fighting with the Nubians on land recently, and they had no time to care about things on the sea, so they acquiesced to Orwell's cleanup work, while the Arabs in Yemen were relatively weak. Orwell threatened that if they did not restrain their fleets, he would carry out a punitive maritime expedition, and left the fleet at the other side's doorstep. Finally, the other side was scared and had to cooperate with the Romans to maintain public order. Anyway, this was not completely unprofitable for them.

At the same time, another group of Vikings represented by Rollo also sent troops over. Orville was very clear about his idea, but there was no need to stop him. He was happy that the other party wanted to form a check and balance between him and Ivar. Dynamic balance is always better than monopoly and rigidity. Sure enough, Ivar showed a sense of urgency after the other party arrived, and did things much more disciplined than before.

With the Red Sea temporarily suppressed, maritime trade with India was reopened. This time, the scale was larger than before. The fleet, including the escorting warships, had more than ten ships. It was obvious that Ivar and others were determined to win this time.

The variable was the Indians on the other side. There were also some seafaring nations there. Orville was really out of reach. However, there was no way that there would be no risk. If there was no risk, there would not be 20 times the profit. He and Ivar saw things very clearly and had made up their minds early.

——

The remaining infrastructure work could be presided over by Cleopatra. The other party was capable enough, and Orville did not have to worry too much.

He took the time to find Quintilian and had an in-depth exchange with him, mainly on education construction.

"I hope you can stay in Alexandria for a while. Due to some political issues in the future, the situation in the capital will not be very stable. I admire your talents and agree with your educational philosophy. It is a general trend to popularize education so that more people can read and write. The country needs more officials and more military talents who understand the art of war. These require a certain level of education.

I am willing to sponsor your venue, funds and most teachers, recruit students for you, so that you can open a school here with peace of mind, as long as you nod and agree. But I hope you can focus more on basic education. Advanced education should certainly exist, but I think the foundation is more important. Do you think it's okay?"

The concepts of the ancient world and the modern world are different. As for the Romans, they certainly believe that the country has the responsibility to protect the country and the people, maintain order, maintain the Mediterranean trade network and other systems, but in their eyes, education should not be considered part of the country's basic responsibilities. There is no such thing as compulsory education or public education. It all depends on the ability of the family and parents.

Let’s not talk about human rights and morality (actually, we can’t completely ignore them). From a utilitarian point of view, this is not a good thing. The country needs officials to rule, and officials must have cultural level. Education cannot be fully popularized in ancient times, but it is definitely not good if it is not popularized at all.

Orville has a master who is good at education in front of him. It would be a pity not to find the other party to test the waters. The school opened by Quintilian in Rome focuses more on advanced education. Now Orville asks the other party to return to basic education. There must be some room for consideration, so Orville is not in a hurry and patiently waits for Quintilian to answer him.

Finally, Quintilian nodded in agreement: "I can't guarantee that I can meet your expectations, but I can guarantee that I will do my best, and my ability should be considered outstanding. As long as you help me open a school, it will also satisfy one of my wishes. My financial ability does not support me to do this. Now someone is helping me, I should be happy."

"Please rest assured that I will do what I say and give you satisfactory help. My idea is that it should not be limited to this school. If the system of this school is successful, it should be further promoted. Not only to Egypt, but to the entire empire after my wife ascends the throne. So what you are doing now is crucial and related to the future of the entire empire's education system."

Orville is now very good at fooling people, and Quintilian's heart surges when he hears it. At the same time, he has many educational concepts and cognitions from later generations, and can give the other party a lot of valuable suggestions, which makes Quintilian suddenly realize and see the light from time to time.

After more than an hour of conversation, Quintilian looked at Orville with more than just respect, but also some heartfelt admiration. From the conversation with Orville, he could feel that the other party really cared about education and had put a lot of thought into related matters. This was an extremely rare thing, and he felt like he had met a bosom friend.

When he first crossed over, he might have felt extremely happy to have celebrities in later generations treat him with respect, but now he was almost numb. Now Orville's impression of historical figures was more of curiosity, wanting to see what they were like, whether they lived up to their names or not.

——

The next day, at a parade ground outside Alexandria, Orville was watching cavalry training.

Covering the saddle with linen vests, the cavalry approached in a dense formation to launch a group charge, with more than a dozen horses forming a line and rushing quickly.

After one row of cavalry passed, the next row began to sprint, and the instructors loudly commented and corrected the behavior of each square team in the back.

Orville watched for a long time, and nodded repeatedly with satisfaction.

After solving the education problem, the next most important thing is the military problem. Conventional weapons don't need to be too much of a headache. He already has an arsenal here, and the output is increasing little by little. It is basically no problem to meet his needs, not to mention that there is Syria's production capacity and reserves to borrow.

The problem lies in two new things - crossbows and cavalry.

The former is mainly limited by materials. Orville knows that the Romans have no archery tradition at all, so they simply let the main legion use crossbows on a large scale, and a few elite soldiers practice bows and arrows. The threshold for using crossbows is much lower. It doesn't take a long time for these soldiers to master it with the training intensity.

But the materials are a bit difficult to deal with. The materials needed to make excellent bows and crossbows are more difficult to find than one another. The six materials summarized in ancient times in the Central Plains are relatively common in various places: stems, horns, tendons, glue, silk, and lacquer. That is, wood, animal horns, animal tendons, glue made from fish and animals, silk, and surface coatings.

Wood is relatively easy to solve, animal tendons and glue are also easy to say, but animal horns are quite difficult to deal with, because it is best to use ox horns, and it is well known that many places in Europe are plowed by horses, and there are not so many oxen to provide ox horns. Only Egypt and Iberia and other places use oxen to plow more.

So Orville had to find a place to make up for it. He set his sights on the Parthians and southern Africans. As far as he knew, some places in the Persian Plateau and the Mesopotamian Basin still used oxen to plow. Of course, they have ox horns to export, and there are also wild African buffaloes in central and southern Africa. Maybe he can find some African chiefs to help export some to fill the gap.

He is still negotiating with others on the specific method. In short, there is a gap at present.

Orville is going to give up on paint, or lacquer, for now. If there is a chance in the future, maybe he can get some lacquer trees to plant. For now, don't think about it. Not to mention that it is difficult to contact the country on the other side of the Eurasian continent. Even if they can be contacted, the price of imported lacquer trees is luxury. Even if the imported tree species can really survive, it will take a long time for the trees to grow into timber. I don't know how many rounds of civil wars have been fought by then.

Anyway, lacquer is mainly used to increase the service life and prevent moisture. It has no great impact on the performance of bows and arrows. It can be maintained by oiling and other methods. This will be fine for now.

Orville thinks the focus is on silk, because this is not only a matter of tactical equipment, but also an economic account.

In the future, Pliny the Elder will angrily denounce the Romans for their extravagant enjoyment, spending hundreds of millions of sesterces on importing oriental luxury goods every year. The biggest part of this is spices, the other is silk, and the most important is silk.

This kind of light, comfortable and breathable clothes that can highlight the beauty of the body are of course welcomed by the nobles, especially the noble women. Every year, the Romans have to spend a lot of money in trade with the Parthians like paying tribute.