Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 296 Aftermath
In ancient times, the scope of information dissemination was limited, but the news that the Romans were recruiting talents still spread. The scope was not limited to several major cities in Egypt. Through his own private business, Orville also posted notices in several major cities in Rome, Greece, Syria and Gaul.

It will take time to do so in other places, but already in Alexandria, many people have accepted Orville's recruitment.

The response was a little more enthusiastic than he had imagined. It might be due to consideration of the future political environment. People believed that the Romans would be even more powerful. Or it might simply be because Cleopatra was helping behind the scenes. In short, Orville found some outstanding talents in a short period of time.

After all, it was the academic center of the Mediterranean world. Alexandria had many literate intellectuals, among whom there were always some who were unhappy with their lives. Orwell accepted their self-recommendations and prepared to use them as administrative bureaucrats, probably dozens of them.

It's true that there aren't many of them, but the number is still increasing. Orville is already quite satisfied with these people.

In addition, there was another person who interested Orville, named Claudius Galen.

This was an intellectual from the Anatolian Peninsula. He had received a good education due to his wealthy family. In history, he lived in the Antonine era several decades later and was a very good doctor.

He is almost considered to be the most important medical scientist after Hippocrates. He has made some achievements in the treatment of internal and external injuries, and has written a large number of medical monographs. He is considered an excellent doctor who is good at both theory and practice.

In this world, he was just over 30 years old, and had just finished his studies in Alexandria, and had worked as a surgeon there for a while to gain experience. He clearly told the recruiting officer the purpose and requirements of his application: he hoped to be given more patients to treat, and he wanted to gain experience through practice. He also hoped that the Romans would give him some freedom, including but not limited to the freedom to resign, the autonomy of diagnosis and treatment, and sufficient medical supplies.

There was little mention of salary. In this era, most people who are able to study for more than ten or twenty years without doing any work are either rich or noble. Most of them are extremely rich and would not look down on the salaries paid by Orville.

As for the remaining requests, some people might think they were troublesome, but in Orville's opinion, they were reasonable requests, so Orville agreed to the other party's request and recruited him as a military doctor.

Orville not only paid high salaries to historical figures like Galen, but also to the bureaucrats or talents from unconventional fields he recruited. It was like paying a huge sum of money for a good job. He hoped to attract more people to join the army or become bureaucrats through this method.
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Recruiting soldiers was at best a minor episode, and the outside world's biggest concern about Egypt was the war between Orville and the local nobles and Greek immigrants.

Faced with a series of combined blows, the local lands belonging to the great nobles and the temples are being continuously reclaimed. Orville is gradually advancing his power deep inland to the south, starting from the delta where the Nile River meets the sea.

It seems that the area of ​​land he occupies is not large. So far, he only occupies the river delta and part of the land along the Nile River. In fact, his advantage is now so great that he can almost win the war.

Because the essence of Egypt's land is in the Nile Delta and the alluvial plains along the coast, occupying these parts is actually occupying Egypt's most fertile and important land. The remaining nobles and immigrants who control the barren land have already planned to surrender when they see the situation is not good.

They had no national hatred or family feud with the Romans, so it was impossible for them to give up their wealth and run into the desert to fight guerrilla warfare against the Romans. Rather than losing everything in the end, they thought it would be better to negotiate peace now and get a more decent result.

Orville was very lenient to those who surrendered, and as long as they surrendered, they would be forgiven. Those immigrants who gave up resistance could still keep their land, and there would not be much actual punishment unless they actually violated the law.

As for the nobles and temples that owned large amounts of land, Orville still retained some of their land and privileges, but required them to donate a considerable portion of their wealth to be nationalized.

He hinted, intentionally or unintentionally, that he and the Roman Empire would still have use for these local nobles in the future. As long as they performed well and demonstrated their value, they would not only have the hope of being reinstated, but also the hope of going further and gaining more power and wealth than before.

From the perspective of a reformer, Orville's approach was quite gentle. At the same time, he did not forget to threaten these nobles with the liberation of the tenants. The chains that restrained these people were ultimately in the hands of the Romans. The surging public opinion was like a sharp sword hanging over the heads of these old nobles, which could fall at any time and cut their families into pieces.

At this time, Cleopatra made good use of her special status as a descendant of the king and the successor, and won over several major nobles in the opposing camp and made them reluctantly hand over their lands.

These nobles, who were united by complex interests, suddenly lost several backbones. After considering many factors, more and more nobles and temples chose to side with Orville. Finally, the resistance forces in various places collapsed in a short period of time, except for those diehards who knew they would be liquidated or were really stubborn. As the governor, Orville controlled these lands on behalf of the empire and the Egyptian royal family.

At this time, Orville had been in Egypt for several months. By the spring of the following year, in order to minimize the delay of the upcoming wheat harvest (Egypt mainly plants wheat after floods in the second half of the year and harvests it in the first half of the year) and stabilize the local situation, the Egyptian central government quickly made a new decision - first, to fulfill its promise and distribute part of the nationalized land to the liberated tenants who had contributed to the war.

Fortunately, the land of the temple and the land of the great nobles were connected, so it was easy to divide them. The new government distributed the land to these two or three thousand people in a relatively fair way.

There is still a lot of land left, and Orville has not chosen to distribute it for the time being, nor does he want to maintain an economic model similar to slavery. Instead, he wants to rent or sell the land.

The executive bureaucrats were partly Romans and partly local new bureaucrats. As for the policy inspiration, it came from Orville's solution to the land of the Gallic nobles. The two were almost identical, except that the scale was much larger than that of Gaul. Orville's bureaucrats had this experience.

(End of this chapter)