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

Chapter 617: Rebuilding the Empire

The Roman Empire had many problems, but it also had few problems.

Many of the problems are caused by the vested interests, that is, the upper aristocrats of the empire.

For example, the financial problems that have always plagued the empire are rooted in the fact that these imperial nobles control the empire's commerce, economy, handicrafts, and a large amount of land, and they also use various methods to pay less taxes or even no taxes.

The empire's tax revenue was greatly reduced. In the past, the empire had the North African colonies to recover its losses, but North Africa was occupied by the Vandals. In addition, those officials were corrupt, so the empire's finances were naturally insufficient.

Now this problem of the empire has been basically solved. The Vandals were wiped out in this wave, and they took away the last few nobles, and they themselves were also wiped out. Now the North African region is basically a piece of fat meat, just waiting for him to take over.

Without these nobles, the North African colonies were recovered, the empire's finances immediately became sufficient, the financial problems were solved, and the only remaining problems were minor ones.

In the city of Rome.

After a day of fighting, the city of Rome suffered heavy casualties, but fortunately it was stabilized.

Richard casually flipped through the books in the Roman Library. This time he acted decisively and his army attacked quickly, not giving the Vandals any time to fight, so the books here were not burned.

With these collections of books, Richard could easily establish an academy in Rome to train talents.

The future Roman Empire will certainly need many qualified officials, and he doesn't want to select all of them from the nobles.

At the same time, the academy was established to limit the spread of Roman Catholicism and to allow polytheism to develop.

Richard gathered his cloak and said, "Aleiya, remember this."

Alea, who had been following behind, nodded.

"The city of Rome is temporarily placed under military management, and everyone is assigned work based on their own conditions and abilities."

"The food in Rome will be taken into the army first and distributed uniformly by the army. After the subsequent food is delivered, we can relax the restrictions as appropriate."

"Form a security team to maintain law and order in the city. Those who take advantage of the fire to loot, rob supplies, and rape women will be killed without mercy."

"Confiscate the property of those nobles and put it into the national treasury. At the same time, bury and burn the bodies to prevent the plague from happening."

"Send envoys to various places in the north to pass on the order that the army continue to guard the border to prevent foreign invasion."

"Okay, that's all I'll remember for now!"

Alea quickly wrote it down and showed it to Richard.

After confirmation, the order was issued.

Richard did not care about Monotheism. Although Monotheism was also looted, some churches were not affected and could solve the problem on their own.

Moreover, this time the people in Rome were very hostile to monotheism, so it would be better to separate them temporarily.

Under Richard's arrangement, restoration and reconstruction work began in the city soon. A large number of collapsed buildings were cleared, and the corpses were dealt with after being identified.

If there are still living family members, they will be buried according to the family's wishes. If there are no living family members, they will all be cremated and buried in the cemetery.

As for the bodies of the Vandals, they were also cleared out. They were too lazy to distinguish them, so they just dug large pits outside the city and threw the bodies in to burn them. After burning, they were buried. The whole process went very smoothly.

This time, at least 40,000 to 50,000 people died in the city, of which more than 20,000 to 30,000 were Vandals, and the rest were Roman citizens.

After the inventory, there were still more than 30,000 people left in Rome.

After suffering several military disasters, this eternal city, which once had a population of over 100,000, has less than one-third of its population left.

But even so, it is much better than in history.

Two days later, the follow-up 20,000 troops of the Gallic Legion also arrived in Rome. The arrival of these troops suddenly made Rome lively, and the arrival of the troops brought a large amount of food and supplies.

The food supply in the city also became abundant.

Immediately after receiving 20,000 reinforcements, Richard began to deal with problems in other cities in Italy.

In just three months, two emperors died in succession and the city of Rome was captured, which was a serious damage to the Roman Empire.

Some cities even began to no longer obey Rome's orders.

Richard would not tolerate these cities. He directly divided the 20,000 troops into five groups, each led by five extraordinary knights under his command, and ordered them to conquer those cities that disobeyed orders and wanted to become independent.

At the same time, Richard sent people to collect ships and boatmen. This time the Vandals were completely wiped out, and they didn't have many troops in North Africa. It can be said that this is the time when the Vandals are the weakest. He planned to collect ships and take the opportunity to cross the sea to attack North Africa.

Carthage and the North African province were brought back under control. Richard planned to destroy the Vandals, take back the North African province, and then ascend the throne to become emperor.

With his great achievements in recovering Rome, recovering North Africa, and restoring the empire, it was only natural for him to become emperor.

Who dares to object? They will be dragged out and chopped off.

Twenty thousand troops attacked in all directions. Those extraordinary knights had fought so many battles with Richard and were all proficient in battle formations. It was not easy for them to deal with these small warlords from various places.

In just one month, he occupied those cities that refused to surrender. Seeing that Rome dealt with those people easily, the remaining people who were still wavering immediately sent envoys to Rome and knelt down in front of Richard.

Richard did not deal with these people, but comforted them with kind words. These people had their own thoughts, but after being killed as a warning to others, they became very honest. He did not have so much time to deal with them now, so he let them continue to do their work.

When he has time, he will adjust and replace these people. If they agree honestly, he will continue to appoint them to an official position and let them continue to do their job. As for those who refuse to do so, or make small moves, that will be an excuse for him to take action.

When the time comes, just send the army to solve it.

The city of Rome was placed under military control, and within a month, the ruins were almost completely cleared, and all the bodies were dealt with. Although the city was still in ruins, its appearance had changed drastically.

In order to make up for the population of Rome, Richard placed part of the army here and officially announced the abolition of slavery in order to obtain more population.

Richard also took this opportunity to sort out the land outside the city of Rome. These lands used to belong to the nobles, but now they are all taken over by the state and then distributed to soldiers and Roman citizens.

Each soldier was given 50 mu of land, while ordinary people were given 20 mu. Richard distributed the land around Rome and immediately won the support of everyone.

Immediately afterwards, Richard asked Alea to start running a caravan to restore Rome's economy.

After a series of combined punches, the city of Rome began to recover.

At this time, after searching from all sides, Richard successfully collected hundreds of ships of various sizes.

These ships were of different sizes, but they could still transport 20,000 troops. The wind and waves in the Mediterranean were not strong, and the hydrological conditions were not bad. As long as the ships did not encounter wind and waves, it was still safe to sail.

Therefore, after clearing the cities around Italy, Richard began to lead his army to prepare to cross the sea to attack North Africa.

In order to prevent anyone from taking advantage of the opportunity to cause chaos, Richard left all the extraordinary knights except those who stayed in the Gaul province in Rome, and he led the army personally.

Twenty extraordinary knights are guarding Rome. Not to mention the saints of the Holy See, unless God comes and opens the mythological era, there is no way they can occupy Rome.

The strength of the Holy See is now greatly reduced due to the existence of Arians and Gnostics, and its saints are simply unable to deal with these extraordinary knights.

In fact, the strength of the saints has been greatly weakened during this period, and those saints are essentially spellcasters. This world suppresses spellcasters more severely than other extraordinary people.

Otherwise, the witches and Mia that Richard met wouldn't be so weak that they couldn't even beat some ordinary soldiers.

If these extraordinary people want to cast spells, they need to perform various rituals and obtain spellcasting materials. If they had this much time, they would have been killed countless times.

The strongest saint in the Church is St. George, who is said to have slayed a dragon. His current strength is about the same as that of the Extraordinary Knight.

As for the dragon slayers, they should be some dragon monsters in the Nordic region. This world has long been unsuitable for real dragons to survive. Now there are only some sub-dragons left.

You know, Augustine, the saint in monotheism, was killed by the Vandal army, and the saint had no power to fight against the army.

Otherwise, the Pope would not have gone to Attila in person to ask him not to attack Rome.

After arranging things, Richard began to lead the fleet to North Africa. Richard led the army to attack Sardinia and Corsica first. These two islands were the outposts of the Vandals' previous attack on Rome.

The two islands were very close to Italy, and there were basically not many defenders on the islands at that time, so Richard's army easily occupied the two islands.

There were not many people on the island, so Richard only left some soldiers to guard it while the army continued to move south.

North Africa.

The kingdom established by the Vandals was plunged into panic after the news of Gaiseric's death and the annihilation of his army came.

You have to know that the Vandals occupied this place for only more than ten years, and their rule here was not stable. After the main army was completely wiped out, the remaining Vandals immediately began to form a new army.

However, the Vandal population was not large, and even if all the soldiers were recruited, they could only count for more than 20,000 people, and some of them were over 40 years old and some were under 16 years old.

It can be said that almost every citizen was a soldier. The more serious problem was that the army was completely wiped out. The Vandals did not have much weapons and did not even have 30% of their armor.

In order to keep North Africa, the Vandals withdrew their troops stationed in various places and prepared to defend Carthage with all their strength to overcome the difficulties.

(End of this chapter)