Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 276 The Library Suffers Heavy Damage
As the palace was now destroyed by fire and uninhabitable, Orville took the initiative to sell the Governor's Palace, which was second only to the palace in terms of luxury, and Cleopatra moved in, temporarily using it as a temporary palace for the Ptolemaic royal family.

"Claudius, how are things at the library?"

Inside the palace, Cleopatra sat at her desk, asking astronomer Claudius Ptolemy about the situation with a tired look on her face.

"Your reminder was of some use. Most of the most precious books have been shipped out. For example, the manuscripts of Sophocles and Euripides (famous ancient Greek tragedy writers), the manuscripts of correspondence between Aristotle and the son of Ammonzeus (Alexander), and other precious manuscripts were bought back by successive kings with huge sums of money. We have successfully preserved most of these manuscripts.

But apart from these things, we can only salvage a small part of them because time is limited and there are too many books."

Cleopatra waved her hand impatiently to interrupt him: "Just tell me directly how much the loss is."

"About 300,000 volumes... most of our collections were burned." Ptolemy looked very distressed. He was not putting on a show. Such a huge loss really broke his heart.

At that time, the largest library in the West was the Library of Alexandria, which had a rough collection of 500,000 books. It cannot be compared with the libraries of later generations that had millions of books, but it was already an astonishing number in an era when there was no papermaking.

This library was built with huge investments from more than a dozen generations of kings. At any given time, there were at least a hundred scholars conducting research here. The stability of the research was unique in this era when scientific research and academic investment were greatly influenced by the likes and dislikes of monarchs. Ptolemy himself had been the director of the library for quite some time, and he had some feelings for this place.

Cleopatra murmured to herself: "Three hundred thousand copies..."

She also has a relatively clear understanding of this number. This is no longer a simple property loss. To put it more seriously, it can be called a loss of human civilization. She doesn't know how many precious, unique and rare books are in it.

All this can be said to be caused by her. She is a person who values ​​knowledge and is very sad about this. However, if it happens again, she will still choose to do so because it is necessary and she has to accept the loss no matter how great it is.

After brewing her emotions for a while, Cleopatra instructed Ptolemy, "I understand. I will discuss the specific amount with His Royal Highness the Prince later. I will definitely grant the library another sum of money for repairs and the purchase of new books. It just takes time. You talk to the remaining scholars and ask them to be a little more patient.

Don't worry about your food and clothing. I will give you an allowance like all kings, and research can be restored to normal. Please give me some time and I will restore things to their original state. "

Having said that, Cleopatra herself knew in her heart that it would be difficult to restore everything to its original state during her lifetime. Three hundred thousand volumes of books could not be bought with money, and things that were lost could not be returned.

Ptolemy was not just a stubborn scholar. He was very sympathetic to Cleopatra's difficulties. After nodding respectfully, he left the queen's room and continued to do his own thing.

After the other party left, Cleopatra stomped on the floor a few times to vent her anger. Although the treasury was full, it was not worth spending. The money in the treasury had been flowing out at a visible speed in recent times. She had no way to deal with it. Her heart was bleeding, but she had to bite the bullet to fill these holes. In the end, she could only let out a long sigh and said to herself, "Maybe I need some other means. How about selling some jewelry? Or it seems that it would be good to take action on those temples. They have always been too annoying."
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When Orville had initially stabilized the situation in Egypt, a new situation arose in the British province governed by Belisarius. Since Orville had been transferred out of the British province, people inside and outside the province began to stir.

Some people inside are relatively easy to deal with. After all, he has the army at hand, and Belisarius has also reached a marriage alliance with the powerful Wessex royal family, so he can control them temporarily. The external situation has not improved recently, but has become more difficult.

There were some border frictions between him and Boudica. The small-scale private fights between the two sides had never stopped and were becoming more and more intense. The other side's tone was becoming more and more unfriendly. Belisarius did not show his good-guy temperament at this time, but became very tough, which was uncharacteristic of him.

He changed the location of private transactions between the two sides to near the Roman border fortress, and ruthlessly killed or sold into slavery any Celtic bandits who crossed the border to attack merchants and civilians.

Boudica had no intention of going to war with the Romans at the moment, but some of her tribal chiefs who were unable to recognize the situation kept clamoring for war. Belisarius did not care about their tone and only deployed heavy troops on the border to keep an eye on them.

Now the decision of the war is in Boudica's hands. Belisarius is not familiar with her and does not trust this barbarian leader at all. In fact, he has already prepared for war. It depends on whether the other party dares to take action.

Beyond the western border, Britain's southeastern coastline was also plagued by pirate attacks.

After Orville was transferred, the behavior of these pirates became much more rampant than before. Rollo did take the money to do the job and had been concentrating on clearing out the pirates, but it was difficult to eradicate the problem, and pirates still came to the British provinces to plunder from time to time.

Belisarius has figured out his own way based on Orwell's policy, and the results are quite good so far.

The legionnaires built many small camps near the coastline, and he continued to have nobles or officials from all over the country conduct small-scale organized training for the civilians.

Once they found any traces of pirates on the coastline, these civilians would immediately hide in the camp with their valuables and rely on the camp for defense, while lighting beacons to pass on messages. As long as they could hold out until the Roman mobile forces or the large local garrison arrived, these people would naturally retreat.

This did not allow them to defeat the pirates, but it greatly increased the pirates' invasion costs. Often, an invasion would cost many lives and there was the risk of losing all their money. Otherwise, they would have to accept the reality of not gaining much.

Historically, Alfred also used this method to deal with the Vikings, but Belisarius went a step further because he had a central force that was definitely stronger than the pirates.

(End of this chapter)