Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 295 Celebrities
A letter came from the emperor in Rome. Vespa was not very satisfied with Orville's actions, and the letter contained a rare reprimand.

In his opinion, he sent Orville as governor because he acted prudently and orderly. He did not expect that after arriving in Egypt, Orville would act contrary to his usual behavior and began to confront the local Greek immigrants with extremely radical policies. Now, more than half a month has passed, and the resistance activities in various places show no sign of stopping. The one after another does not let Orville's legions live in peace.

This went against the empire's overall policy of recuperation. Vespa was not a cautious person who was afraid of going to war, but he knew that if the country continued to engage in such aggressive military activities, big problems would arise.

Military expenditures have now reached a staggering level. According to the calculations and research of some modern scholars, military expenditures of this era may reach one-third or even more of fiscal revenue. It can only be said that Rome is worthy of being a representative work of classical fascism. Vespa was born a businessman and was sensitive to these figures. He knew that this was not a solution, so after solving the urgent Gaul problem, he tried his best to avoid foreign military action and tried to increase revenue and reduce expenditure as much as possible.

Judging from the results, this method was quite useful. After all, more than 20 years later, the country reached its peak under the "Five Good Emperors". Vespa made an indelible contribution in this regard, bringing a country that was almost falling apart back on track.

Vespa not only understood the problem himself, but also tried his best to make others aware of the problem. Orville was undoubtedly one of the people who deeply understood Vespa's ideas. Now Orville openly violated Vespa's policy direction and started a war in Egypt, which made Vespa a little unhappy.

Unlike Britain, Vespa did not intend to make any money there. In his opinion, Orville had not lost too much money and had stabilized the province, which was a complete victory. But after all, Egypt was also the source of wealth and grain for the empire. If there was a problem, the economy of the entire empire would be affected. This was of great importance and could not be easily dismissed.

Orville wrote a letter to the other party, promising that he would not delay the wheat planting activities next year, and wrote a long essay to explain the necessity of his current behavior. After the messenger took the letter away, he sat in the chair and let out a melancholy sigh.

Things were more complicated than he thought. It was indeed not so easy to solve the problems that successive Egyptian kings had failed to solve. If it were not for the military advantage and Cleopatra's full cooperation, Orville might have to give up now. Even so, he was very uncomfortable now. He had to deal with a lot of government affairs and analyze a lot of trivial news every day.

Fortunately, it has not been without results so far. In the face of powerful military force, more and more land has been reclaimed, and more and more garrison troops have been forcibly disbanded.

Landlords who resisted had their properties confiscated, temples that resisted had all their lands taken away and could only live on contributions from believers, and soldiers who resisted were deprived of all their lands and reduced to landless peasants. Iron-fisted measures were used to suppress them one by one, and the effect should be quite significant. Orwell estimated that it would not have too much impact on agricultural production, and it might even be beneficial to production, because after the peasants were liberated, their enthusiasm for production increased significantly.

Although Egypt's grain-producing areas have a Mediterranean climate, due to the impact of floods, wheat can only be harvested once a year in many areas along the Nile River. After the flood period in the second half of the year is over, the Egyptians will start sowing and wait for the harvest next year.

This year's sowing has been completed, and there is still a long time before next year's harvest and sowing, enough time for Orville to do a lot of things.

In addition to disarmament and land reduction, Orville also had a more urgent request - recruiting talents.

He has many capable people under his command, but because his business is too big and his staff are scattered all over the empire, he is now more or less stretched. So now is the time to expand his team. Orville took the time to publish a notice, hoping to recruit some talented people from Egypt or neighboring provinces.

Before the recruitment officially began, he found a very interesting person within the army.

He discovered that one of the captains among the reinforcements brought by Tia was a real person who existed in history and lived in this era.

His name was Cnaeus Julius Agricola. In history, he was promoted by Vespa and once served as a provincial governor. His greatest achievement was that as the governor of the province of Britain, he conquered the Brigantes in northern Britain to the north and almost brought the current Scottish region under the rule of the empire.

The reason why it was almost there was that he had already won the decisive battle and used step-by-step tactics to lock the activities of the Brigantes into a very small area. In fact, he was only one step away from conquering the current Scottish region.

At this time, the historical Domitian (Domitia) ordered Agricola to return to the court. Optimistic scholars believe that this was because Domitian had his own considerations for the imperial strategy, while conspiracy theorists believe that this was because Domitian was selfish and jealous and did not want Agricola's achievements in Britain to outweigh his own achievements in Dacia (near present-day Romania) and Germanic regions.

Orville did not comment on this. In any case, Agricola was still a man of some ability. The reason why people in later generations, including Orville, knew this relatively unimportant person was more because he had a good son-in-law.

His son-in-law was a famous historian, Tacitus, known as the "Tyrant's Whip", who was famous for his works such as Germania, Chronicles, and General History. He also wrote a personal biography of his father-in-law, called "The Life of Agricola". Therefore, Agricola was able to leave his name in later generations, and Orville knew him through Tacitus.

There is no doubt that Agricola himself was capable and Orville was interested in him, but he was more interested in Tacitus.

It’s not that he has any extraordinary talent, Orville is simply interested in this person out of personal thoughts.

This incident reminded Orville that even though Tacitus was probably still learning Latin somewhere, Orville should pay attention to him and bring him over if he had the chance.

Apart from him, Orville did not find any other historical celebrities he knew in his army. Through interviews and auditions combined with military merit selection, he promoted a group of grassroots officers in the army. He could barely fill the gap in military talents with the help of the Romans, but even so, he still needed some other talents to rule.

(End of this chapter)