king of ros

Chapter 37 The Cave Order
The cave monastery is an important monastery in the Kyiv area. Its founder, Anthony, dug a cave here to practice decades ago, but now there are hundreds of monks. The monks opened up rooms in the cave as a monastery room, where they hone their minds with thought.

Many members of the Ross Church came from this monastery, and even the current Metropolitan came from this monastery. Its importance to the Ross Church is beyond doubt.

When Rostislav came to the cave monastery with his army, he saw the famous hill, and the village below it.

Although it was said that the monks should cultivate the land by themselves, and they did, but due to the existence of the monastery, nearby farmers and devout believers could not help but gather under the monastery and develop settlements.

Later, with a wave of his hand, the Grand Duke directly assigned these farmers who were moving closer to the monastery to the monastery, allowing them to use taxes to support the monks. However, although they had no worries about food and clothing, the cave monastery still maintained its poor and rigorous style.

The monks still directly participated in the labor, and also taught the farmers the agricultural technology they had mastered to help them obtain better harvests. In the process, the farmers were gradually infected by the monks' discipline.

Now, due to the threat of the Polovts army, the gates of the villages and towns below the monastery are closed, and guard militias can be seen everywhere on the wooden walls. These young and clumsy people took up weapons and put on armor and stood on it.

But beyond the gate, an army of peasant soldiers awaited Rostislav's arrival, and their leader was Theothedo, the abbot of the cave monastery.

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"Thank you very much for your help, Dean."

After riding the horse and talking with Dean Theosidor, Rostislav learned that this army was prepared for him, and that 600 militiamen from the cave monastery would join his army.

There were even dozens of nomads among these people. When the prince asked, he found out that they were the prairie wanderers taken in by the abbot. After he urged them to convert to Christ, the abbot let them stay in the monastery to do some cargo transportation. matter.

Most importantly, the dean also brought out a large amount of food, weapons and equipment, as well as the cart that Rostislav had been working hard to collect, which can be said to have solved their urgent needs.

"Only due, son of Vladimir, your father has aided our monastery many times and now is the time to pay back."

Dean Theothedo replied to Rostislav with a serious face, the bishop is a strict man, as can be seen from his strict eyes and neat attire, his callused hands show that The abbot often personally participated in labor production.

But looking at his stern appearance, it's hard to imagine that he ever selflessly helped the pagans, urging them to convert to the great God.

"This is the clerk we sent you. His name is Nestor."

Diosidore pulled out a shy young man, and pulled him to Rostislav.

"I salute you, my lord."

The young man paid homage to young Prince Ross under the abbot's majesty.

"Nestor? Clerk? Thank you very much, Dean."

Rostislav looked at these cowering young people, his words were mixed with surprise and joy. Although this person is so young now, he knows what this person will achieve in the future.

This man would become the author of Rose's first chronicle, "The Chronicles of Past Years", and of course, this young man, who was still young, did not know what he would accomplish.

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Having obtained the army provided by the cave monastery, the prince's army numbered more than a thousand, with which Rostislav continued on his way.

The peasant soldiers provided by the cave monastery lived with strict disciplined monks for a long time, so they generally have a sense of discipline, which satisfied Rostislav. restrained with a whip.

The prince still remembered how helpless he was in the face of those lawless soldiers when he first led the army. In the end, Uncle Veshata came to the rescue and used a whip to deal with these people, so that the situation did not deteriorate.

It's just that in terms of war experience, these people are complete recruits. The posture of holding a spear can no longer be more like holding a farm tool, and no matter how they walk, they look like farmers.

Moreover, many people still have some fantasies about war that come from ballads, which can't help but make Rostislav support them.

But it is also normal, after all, before experiencing the war, people always have inexplicable romantic fantasies about this beast that ravages the world. It is not until the beast swallows them that they wake up in the pool of blood, but it is often too late.

Most of these farmers are equipped with armed clothing, with knives, axes and spears in their hands, as well as spear-throwing shields. This is the equipment provided by the monastery. Many of them are made by the residents of the monastery to cope with today's situation.

Some of the shepherds for the monastery were good at using slings, but it was obvious from their honest appearance that they didn't realize how deadly killers they were.

Sometimes looking at these shepherds, the prince couldn't help thinking in his heart, is there any difference in essence between a lord and a shepherd?But these philosophical questions only troubled him for a while, and he had to focus on reality after all.

In the spare time of the daily march, Rostislav and his soldiers would train the peasants and tell them how to form a formation of chariots to fight. The sides of the chariots were equipped with shields as barriers, and the prince was not in these things. Spend less energy on it.

Car formations are no strangers in this land. The Pechenegs are used to forming large convoys to fight on the move. The grasslands and surrounding peoples all know this tactic, and this is the first way for infantry to fight against nomads under inferior forces. choose.

After discovering the cavalry brigade of nomads, the prince will immediately order his subordinates to use carts to build a chariot formation to defend in it.In order to guard the chariot formation, he also specially pulled several carts of arrows, just to provide enough ammunition for the archers at that time.

There is also a flaw in the method of car formation, that is, the size of Rostislav's army is too small. If the nomadic army attacks with all its strength, regardless of casualties, he will be lost in the battle formation, but fortunately His task is not to challenge the huge nomadic army, but to scout, obtain useful information or make some achievements.

The Cave Monastery also sent a dozen crossbows, which was a great gift. As a monastery closely related to the imperial capital and the church, the Cave Abbey was naturally not a problem to get a dozen or so novelties from the imperial capital. .

These crossbows are priceless in Ross. Except for the cave monastery, there are simply not so many crossbows available in other places.

The advantage of the crossbow is that it only needs a little training and can pull the string. No matter how poor a farmer is, he can become a qualified crossbowman. Moreover, the crossbow is so powerful that it is extremely suitable for dealing with heavy cavalry.

Rostislav selected a dozen or so reliable infantrymen to use these crossbows, so that his army had an additional long-range strike force, and crossbowmen were very effective against cavalry archers.

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(End of this chapter)