Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 104 Weird tacit understanding

When Orville was halfway through his march, he received important news from the signalman.

It can only be said that he was very skilled and courageous. He used the limited number of soldiers he had to formulate a three-pronged attack plan.

The previous steady and cautious approach may have been just a decoy. When the Gauls relaxed their vigilance, Aurelian's army began to maneuver quickly again.

His army set out from the two major cities of Bordeaux and Toulouse and made a long-distance raid to capture the important cities of Poitiers and Limoges in Aquitania. Due to the suddenness of the attack, the Gauls were not prepared for the siege and both cities were captured by the Romans in a short time.

After capturing the city, they held on and waited for reinforcements. Aurelian personally led a special forces team and cooperated with the defenders in the city to defeat the Gallic troops who tried to retake the city. Due to the heavy loss of manpower, the Gauls' defense plan in Aquitania failed, and it was difficult to pose a significant obstacle to the Romans.

It can be clearly seen that Aurelian's plan was not simply to occupy a few cities, but to use the city's offensive and defensive battles to destroy the enemy's manpower in large numbers and defeat the enemy's confidence. This plan was very successful. Almost 100,000 people were lost, and the Gauls in Aquitania were no longer a force to be reckoned with.

He once again divided his army into three groups. He led three ordinary legions to attack the nearby villages and towns based on two large cities, while the other two elite legions besieged two cities along the Loire River - Tours and Orleans.

He wanted to take advantage of the Gauls' sudden shock and inability to react to quickly expand the victory, so as to avoid having to deal with the sticky tactics and unnecessary troubles.

Aurelian's vigorous performance made Orville feel a little uneasy. He suddenly feared that the army he had put together at great expense of everything he had would ultimately be of no use.

Even if the cavalry used continuous replacement of horses at the post stations to increase the speed of communication, it would still take about half a month for information to travel between the two places. This was unavoidable. He could only wait anxiously on the road, hoping for new news on the battle situation in Gaul.

After seemingly making some progress, the battle there fell into a stalemate again. The Gauls were indeed very resilient and were still holding back Aurelian's legions. The other two legions that tried to get their hands on the Loire River also ran into some trouble. After a long siege of the two cities, the Romans had no choice but to resort to traditional techniques.

They built various walls and strongholds around the cities of Tours and Orleans, and combined them with a dense network of outposts to try to outlast the enemy for a while.

As far as they knew, there were not many supplies in these two cities. After all, the incident happened suddenly. Due to successive defeats, the morale of the Gauls was very low, while the morale of the Romans was high. The situation was very favorable for the Romans.
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Orville followed the battle reports from the front line for more than two months and finally arrived at the German Legion’s garrison on the banks of the Rhine River.

Although this is one of the heavily-garrisoned frontiers of the Empire, due to the easing of relations between the Romans and other ethnic groups such as the Franks in recent decades, it is actually relatively peaceful here.

Even when the Gauls revolted, they consciously avoided this area, not because they were afraid of the half-crippled Germanic Legion, but because they were wary of the Franks who were on guard against by the Germanic Legion.

The Romans are now the enemies of the Gauls, but that does not mean that the Germanic people represented by the Franks are not. Before the Romans conquered Gaul, the Germanic people often harassed and invaded the Gauls' territory. Later, Caesar made a very foresighted judgment. If Rome left the Germanic people alone, they would invade the Gauls' territory and eventually Germanize the entire Gaul. This trend was finally curbed for hundreds of years because of his feat of conquering Gaul.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire's rule in Gaul, the Germanic peoples represented by the Franks did conquer Gaul as he said, and established their own kingdom on this land, and Gaul was partially Germanized.

Because of this, it is difficult to say what ethnic groups made up France in later generations - the Franks (Germanic people), Gauls (Celts), Romans (Latin people) and even Greeks all had a profound impact on this land.

The Gauls in this time and space were particularly wary of the Germanic people represented by the Franks, not only because of the story in the Gallic War more than a hundred years ago, but more because at this moment, the Germanic people were invading their relatives.

At this time, not only Rome, but the Germanic people also developed better than normal history and had now entered the early feudal era. And the more crucial point was that Rome did not conquer the British Isles, which was a "no man's land" inhabited by weak Celts.

Therefore, the Germanic peoples invaded the British Isles hundreds of years earlier. They had driven their Gaul relatives to slightly remote and desolate places, and established many small Germanic kingdoms in the richest places, just like the Anglo-Saxon invasion that would happen in history.

The bloody example was right before their eyes, so the Gauls had no doubt that the Franks would invade their land if given the chance. Now a very strange tacit understanding had developed between the Germanic Legion and the Gauls because of this incident.

The Gauls no longer harassed the Germanic legions, and the Germanic legions would not turn around to deal with the Gauls, but would instead concentrate on guarding against the real enemy they should deal with, the Franks who were eyeing them covetously on the other side of the river.

Considering that many people in the Germanic Legion were of Gallo-Roman mixed blood and were caught in the middle, this was exactly what they wanted. They didn't have to fight with their relatives, so they maintained this strange harmony.

Now with the arrival of the new legion, this harmony is about to be broken, because the order Tia received is to advance westward and attack the flank of the Gallic territory.

Therefore, it was obvious that the people here did not welcome the arrival of Tia and others with the army, but that was all. It was impossible for them to take up arms and fight against Tia.

If they were really extremely inclined towards Gaul, they would have taken up arms and joined the rebels long ago, just like those Gallic nobles with the surname "Julius".

The fact that they are still loyal to their duties now means that they recognize or need their identity as Roman citizens more in their hearts. These four words still have a certain value in such marginal provinces, and not everyone can give them up.

Besides, even in the relatively isolated German provinces, the news of Aurelian's successive victories on the front lines could reach their ears, so it would be more or less unwise to start a rebellion now.

(End of this chapter)