Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 237 Deploying Troops
Orville knew that the news should be the fastest. Cleopatra should have just arrived in Antioch. By the time the news of her recruiting troops in Antioch reaches Rome, it will take at least one or two months for the Romans to work out a countermeasure. During this period of time, he can do a lot of things.

Therefore, he had to set off for Egypt before the news reached Rome. Then he would just pretend to be stupid and say he didn't know the situation, which would barely shut up the Senate. They might have suspicions in private, but they couldn't find any solid evidence. At most, they would just gossip in secret. Orville should have been used to this by now.

Cleopatra's refuge in the Syrian province should not be a problem in the short term. The current governor of Syria is still Mucinus, an old general who is relatively upright and not easily bribed. He is also very responsible and abides by the rules. Unless Cleopatra wants to rebel against the Romans or the emperor's appointment letter comes down, he will not cross the line to intervene in Egypt's affairs, that is, he will turn a blind eye to the exiled Cleopatra.

Orville and he even had some personal relationship. If he wrote a letter explaining the pros and cons, the other party might pay a little attention to Cleopatra. In short, there was no need to worry too much about her safety.

After confirming this, Orville's next step was to mobilize troops - although there were tens of thousands of Roman troops stationed in Egypt, he could not mobilize them, and in the end he had to rely on his own people to handle the matter. What he had to do now was to find a way to bring the army to the vicinity of Egypt with justification.

The soldiers he brought were all legionnaires and mercenaries he recruited privately. There were no official legionnaires. He had thought about this matter long ago to avoid giving people a chance to criticize him.

After thinking the matter through, he asked the messenger to take a message to the Palfit auxiliary troops stationed north of the Po River, asking them to return directly to the Palfit area by ship. The transport ship was provided directly by Orville. The apparent reason was that these people had completed their service mission, and now the defense of Britain was in charge of the newly recruited German auxiliary soldiers. These Palfit people who were unfamiliar with the place could temporarily return to their homeland for garrison or be disbanded and retired.

Those Germans could be fooled with excuses like "foreign guests" or "business talks", and no one cared about these hundreds of Germans, so they were relatively easy to deal with. What really gave Orville a headache were the most powerful Roman legionnaires. For a moment, he couldn't think of any good reason to bring these people over.

After all, there were already legions stationed in Egypt, and Vespa would not appoint him to replace the Governor of Egypt for the sake of exchanging interests. The Romans were also very sensitive to the military deployment of regular legions. If he led a large army to Egypt and then insisted that he was here to buy luxury goods, even as a reason to fool people and shut them up, it would be too clumsy and the kind of excuse that no one wanted to make.

Vespa authorized Orville to act according to his own ideas in private, on the premise that he would not expand the existing contradictions and conflicts. At the same time, he also reminded Orville to pay attention to some people in the Senate. Not everyone agreed to suppress the Greek provinces and Greeks. If Orville interfered with the succession to the throne of Egypt, there would probably be great potential resistance. So he tried his best to suppress the situation and prevent those people in the Senate from interfering with his behavior.

After thinking it over, he decided to bring his soldiers into the Kingdom of Egypt in batches.

As a prince of the empire, it was normal for him to travel with some guards, especially when he was going on a long journey. With this excuse, he could mobilize a battalion of 600 guards to accompany him. Orville specifically asked for the battalion formerly commanded by Belisarius. He was familiar with these people and their reliability was not a big problem. As guards, their abilities would not be too weak anyway, at least at the level of a top battalion in the mainstream legions of the empire.

With only half of his own legion left, Orville could only think of ways to exploit loopholes. The Roman city was full of spies of the Senate, and they tried to do things in secret without being discovered. There were many veterans who had re-enlisted in the legion. These people were already at the age of retirement. Orville planned to recruit them into his hotel system after retirement, and then send them out of Rome in the name of sending them to work in the eastern provinces to open hotels. In this way, three to five hundred people were sent out.

Then he planned to recruit two battalions of soldiers in Rome to increase the number of his soldiers to the level of a second-rate legion. After recruiting the soldiers, he would send these people out of Rome on a transport ship in the name of training, and make some arrangements on the sea to send some of them to Egypt. In this way, he should be able to send out another five or six hundred people.

Presumably, the people in the Senate only knew the approximate number of Orville's army, and would not deliberately pay attention to whether the number of Orville's army decreased after landing in ports such as Massilia (Marseille). This gave him an opportunity. The number of soldiers sent out through these channels should be barely enough for him to do his thing.
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While Orville was racking his brains to send more people to Egypt, Astolfo was chatting calmly with Alfred.

"The Latin cities are really magnificent. I have never seen such houses and decorations in other places. Compared with them, King Charles's court is just a big rural village, and the big castles of my mother's family are just ordinary military camps."

Astolfo had never been to Rome and he loved to watch the excitement, so of course he would praise the most lively city of Rome. As for Alfred, he had been to Rome before after all, so he was still surprised but to a limited extent.

"If there is anything that the Romans can pass down, one is their sophisticated laws, which combine the advantages of various national laws. Another is their buildings. The idea when they built these buildings was that they hoped these things would never be outdated, and I think they undoubtedly achieved this."

If Orville himself were here, he would at least compliment him on his good vision, as these things did come true.

"That's right. I found something very interesting. People here mix water into the wine. They even add honey to the wine like people in the north. It tastes more like juice."

Alfred did not agree with the other party this time. He just smiled and spoke to the other party politely: "I have always been curious about a question. Please explain it to me. You are obviously a relative of King Charles. In terms of bloodline, you can be considered a noble. Why do you have to hang out with people from our remote country? It seems that returning to Frank is a bigger and better stage for you, right?"

(End of this chapter)