The Great Arcanist Who Traveled Through the World of American Variety Shows.

Chapter 605 Strategic Layout
The large shields surrounded the area on all sides, forming a tight shield wall that trapped all the Germanic barbarian soldiers inside.

With the coordination of bows and spears, the Germanic barbarians were defeated and routed. As the encirclement continued to shrink, more and more Germanic barbarians were killed.

The Germanic barbarian soldiers charged several times, but were all ruthlessly killed, which made many of them collapse.

"The Governor has ordered that those who surrender will not be killed!"

As the order was given, the shield wall that was advancing steadily stopped immediately, and then those people shouted: "Those who surrender will not be killed!"

The German soldiers, whose psychological defenses had been broken, dropped their weapons without any hesitation.

Following the order, the Germanic soldiers surrendered one after another. In a great battle, the Gallic Legion annihilated a large Germanic army at a very small cost. At the same time, the entire Germanic town was also captured.

This town, which had been occupied by the Germans for decades, once again returned to the hands of the Gauls.

However, after entering the town, the Franks suddenly became angry. There were still thousands of Franks in this Germanic town.

All these Franks were slaves.

It is easy to imagine the situation of these people. Basically, they were the Germans who looted the local population after invading Gaul and captured them to use as slaves.

Men were used to work like cattle and horses, while women were used as concubines and slaves. Basically, all the women who were captured were pregnant with Germanic children and gave birth to children for these Germanic people.

The oldest woman was even captured for thirty years, and turned from a ten-year-old girl into a forty-year-old old woman.

Most of the Franks who were looted had already died. The men basically did not live more than three years and would be worked to death, while the women were reduced to reproductive machines.

This 40-year-old woman has given birth to eight children. She now looks very old. It is obvious that giving birth too many times has caused great damage to her body.

This is essentially what happened when the Germanic peoples raided Gaul.

In this way, the Germanic people continued to weaken the strength of Gaul and strengthen their own strength. If this looting continued, the Franks would eventually be assimilated by the Germanic people.

This is exactly how history has developed. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Germanic people established a large number of small countries on this land.

These small countries were eventually unified into the Frankish Kingdom, but by this time the Franks had almost merged with the Germanic people.

In the end, it is not known whether the Franks integrated with the Germans or the Germans integrated with the Franks.

This town is just a microcosm. After the empire declined, the Franks began to shoulder the responsibility of fighting against the Germans.

The focus of the Germanic people's looting was to steal money, food and women. They basically rarely occupied the land of the Gaul province. Only the northern areas were occupied by them because they were close to the Germanic areas.

The slaves in front of us were looted by the Germans a few years ago. This is the reason why the population of Gaul Province has dropped sharply.

The population of Gaul province used to be over three million, close to four million, but now it is less than two million, basically a reduction of half.

After hundreds of years of war, even the Roman Empire could not hold on.

Town Hall. Richard looked at the various outputs and lands of this town. Although the Romans called the Germans barbarians, in fact, the Germans have made good progress.

Much more advanced than the real barbarians.

These Germanic barbarians also cultivated fields, raised livestock, and had good handicraft industries. Of course, these were not on a large scale, and the Germans were more keen on looting.

After all, how can one's own development be faster than plundering?
As long as you succeed once, you will become rich instantly.

Richard was going to capture this town, and he was going to push the defense line of the Gaul province back to the Rhine River. The Rhine River flows down from the Alps and directly divides Western Europe.

Using this river as a defensive line was once the strategy of the Roman Empire, and Richard was also prepared to continue it.

With this river, Paris would not be left without defenses. With the Rhine, defense would be much easier.

At the same time, Paris also gained strategic depth.

After occupying and developing this town, Richard decided to use the slaves and draw some people from the south.

Richard ordered the release of all slaves and announced to them that those who were willing to stay could divide the land equally.

If they do not want to stay, they will be given food and allowed to return to their hometown.

"How many prisoners are there now?" Richard asked.

"Your Excellency, there are three thousand prisoners."

Hearing this, Richard frowned slightly. The population of this German town was only 6,000, but there were 1,000 soldiers. The ratio of soldiers to each other reached 6 to 1.

Almost every family had a qualified Germanic barbarian warrior.

These Germanic people believed in Norse mythology and what they admired most was dying on the battlefield. Dying of old age in a sickbed would be considered a coward.

Therefore, every household was a warrior, and every household sent someone to go south to plunder.

Seeing this kind of military system, Richard was reminded of the time in his previous life when he played strategic games such as Empire War and Total War. The barbarians in the north were always poor and powerful.

Attacking the North is a completely thankless task. The enemy is powerful and each attack results in heavy losses. The key point is that there is no gain at all.

Every time he played the game, Richard would occupy some strategic locations, leave some troops to garrison, to prevent the barbarians from plundering from the south, and then command the army to march south to fight. If it weren't for these strategic points, Richard would not bother to attack here.

Just as Richard was about to set up strongholds for defense, a soldier hurried in, saluted Richard, and said anxiously: "Sir, the Franks massacred the surrendered Germans!"

"Huh?!" Richard was slightly stunned and his face changed slightly.

Just after Richard entered the town, the Franks were unsurprisingly angry after seeing the tragic situation he reported.

Then a massacre began.

Those Frankish soldiers who had not yet retracted their weapons saw this scene and in anger started a massacre of the captives.

The blood dyed the earth red.

Many German captives knelt down and begged for mercy, but no Franks let them go. These Franks waved their weapons, pierced the hearts of the Germans and cut off their heads.

Things quickly spread.

A revenge broke out here. There was originally a deep hatred between the Franks and the Germans, and this time the Franks showed no mercy.

Hundreds of surrendered Germans were all massacred, and even many children were captured and killed.

In the end, the Franks were so bloodthirsty that they even wanted to massacre the entire town.

As a result, he was stopped by Horn who came rushing over.

"Damn it!"

"You are disobeying military orders!"

"You will be beheaded! Do you really want to die?"

Horn said with a livid face. These people were all his subordinates, brave in battle, and they had a good relationship after two years of getting along with each other. Naturally, he didn't want to see this kind of scene.

"We had wiped out all the enemies with very few casualties and everyone was awarded credit for the victory. Now it's all gone!" Horn said angrily.

I want to punish these people severely, but I can't bear it.

"Come here, tie them all up!"

"General, please kill me. Use my head to appease the Governor's anger. Please give them a light punishment!" said the leading centurion, kneeling down.

At the same time, he held a sharp sword in both hands and asked Horn to kill him.

"Damn it, do you think I won't kill you just because you act like this?" Horn kicked him to the ground angrily.

"Don't be too smart!"

"Come and tie up all of them!" Horn gave the order directly.

Soon these hundreds of Franks were tied up, and the leading ones were whipped a hundred times by the military judge ordered by Horn.

"All of you stay still. I'm going to see the Governor right away!" Horn said, then turned around and rode towards the town.

When the Franks who had been beaten heard this, they were immediately surprised and then knelt down on the ground obediently waiting for their fate.

It was clear that their leader had no intention of giving up on them.

When Richard saw Horn again, he didn't show him a good face. He already knew the cause and process of the incident. He heard Horn tied up everyone and whipped them severely.

Richard looked at Horn in front of him and knew that he wanted to save these people.

The military order not to kill prisoners was made by Richard. One of the reasons was the lack of numbers, and the other was to reduce the resistance of those people.

This is how war works. Once a large number of prisoners are killed, when they fight others again in the future, those people would rather die in battle than surrender.

This would cause more casualties in the army and make the war more difficult to fight.

At the same time, due to the war, the province of Gaul was underpopulated, and Richard wanted to use these captives to open mines, reclaim land, or build roads and other large-scale projects.

If these people were killed now, Richard would have to recruit more people from his own team to do the job.

Prisoners are very good human resources. Not killing prisoners can, on the one hand, reduce the enemy's belief in a fight to the death, and on the other hand, obtain a large amount of labor.

So Richard prohibited the killing of prisoners.

At the same time, when Richard was forming his army, he had already enforced strict military discipline, but these people still dared to violate it. His army needed strict probability constraints.

However, in order to kill prisoners, killing hundreds of soldiers at a time, although it would enforce strict military discipline, would also undermine the morale of the army. Therefore, Richard did not intend to kill those people, not to mention Horn's plea for mercy.

In this era, the theory of revenge is even higher than the law.

However, the death penalty could be avoided, but the punishment of life imprisonment could not be escaped. Richard directly ordered that all those people be demoted to the vassal army, and they could only be restored if they were beheaded three levels below the standard.

(End of this chapter)