Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 364 Prophecy
In any case, this incident made Orville even more nervous, and he thought he should speed up the process.

After much deliberation, he wrote a long letter to Mucinus before leaving, explaining the potential risks of those nomadic peoples and asking him to be more careful.

After doing this, Orville took his army on a transport ship to Sicily, preparing to meet up with the other side there.

After he left, the overall coordination of the rear was handed over to Trajan and Cleopatra. Given the current situation, he could not fully trust these two people, but he was relatively sure that they would not directly turn against him in the rear. He also asked Domitia to stay in Egypt to avoid any major problems.

If something major happened, he planned to quickly adopt Trajan to Tia as the royal adopted son, and then let Domitia marry him to establish the legitimacy of his rule, and leave the rest to Trajan.

He is now basically certain that the core members of the Senate are still Nerva and others. In history, the other party would choose Trajan as their adopted son to inherit the country. It is possible that this world line will develop in this way due to the world line correction force. He can only bet on a possibility. Apart from Trajan, he really has no more suitable successor.

The army finally gathered in Sicily. Now they had about four and a half Roman legions and one and a half auxiliary legions. Orville and Tia also knew some friends in their hometown, either openly or secretly. The Senate was only the maintainer of the old rules rather than the complete destroyer and saboteur. Unless they were forced into a desperate situation, they would not do anything to undermine the entire rule.

After completing the preparations, he allowed the foreign troops to continue to stay there, while he and Tia led a large force to cross the Strait of Messina and land on the Apennine Peninsula, which was the homeland of the empire.
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While the war was still brewing on the home front, a series of low-intensity wars had already broken out in Gaul.

In the end, several legions of the Germanic Legion did not forget their duties and continued to stay on the border to guard the border. It seemed that they wanted to step down and act as a safe fence-sitter at the last moment. The one who is relatively happy about this result is Belisarius, which means he can let go and do his work.

There was a reason why Orville called him the Immortal of Bad Wars. After the legion crossed the British Channel and landed, he quickly mobilized various local nobles in Gaul with clever means, stimulating them to send soldiers to participate in the war. In a short period of time, he successfully mobilized two to three thousand relatively elite local soldiers and countless civilians.

With a considerable number of troops, Belisarius finally began to boldly and tentatively attack the cities in southern Gaul controlled by the Senate. The cities were basically assimilated, and the corresponding military strength also declined. After being away from the battlefield for a long time, several key towns began to be in danger and asked Rome for help.

However, although their request for help was sent to Aurelian, who now held military power in Rome, these letters were not accepted. Aurelian mobilized about four legions of troops in his homeland and prepared to go directly south to intercept Orwell's landing army.

His idea was very clear - to kill the head of the snake first, and the rest would naturally collapse without a fight. The head of the snake was the main force in Orville's hands.

Aurelian has always preferred quick attacks. After confirming that the defenses in various places were secure, he led his main force directly south. He wanted to push his army to the south before Orville could react, and then catch the opponent off guard.
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Orville had just landed at the southernmost tip of the Apennine Peninsula, and the few soldiers here were also gathered in Rome for unified command and dispatch. There were no regular soldiers left behind, only some spontaneously organized militiamen, whose purpose was not to fight Orville, but to protect themselves. He did not make things difficult for these people, but continued to move forward, and it would not be too late to seize the next advantageous position as soon as possible and then deal with it slowly. He had no fundamental conflicts with these people, at most he needed to restrain the military discipline of the legionnaires. Fortunately, these people were a little more humane when they fought in their hometown, so he could only do his best.

Advancing along the avenue, Orville soon arrived at Brindisi, the port city on the heel of the "high-heeled shoes". Originally, he planned to hold on here first, and then make plans after the subsequent support materials and troops arrived, to see whether to advance forward or continue to consolidate the position first.

But at this time, Jeanne found Orville again.

She had already put on a set of glittering battle armor and held a specially sewn military flag in her hand. "I came here to tell you this. Aurelian is now marching south at high speed. In order to conceal their whereabouts, they will choose to march between mountains and hills. In two days, they will pass by Lake Consa. The exact location should be the path on the south side of the lake. This is your greatest chance of victory. These are what the angel told me."

After hearing this, Orville's first reaction was not to doubt whether it was true or not, as his experience had shown that it might be true. Instead, he began to wonder why the other party did this, and what exactly was the reason that drove the other party to take the initiative to help Orville win the battle.

Then he roughly understood the other party's idea - the main purpose should be to spread the faith and use Orville to do this.

It is obvious that there are very few sympathizers of Monotheism in the Senate, even at the top level. Even if there are, most of them are noble ladies. The development path of Monotheism is to develop these noble ladies as sympathizers or even believers of Monotheism. For example, Nero's favorite Lydia is a sympathizer of Monotheism.

For example, the opposing commander Aurelian believes in Sol, the native Roman sun god (corresponding to the Greek sun god Helios, and also has some characteristics of the Syrian sun god), and his belief is quite devout, not just a casual verbal statement. It is obviously impossible for such a person to exist as a sympathizer of monotheism.

In comparison, Orville was consciously promoting monotheism as a tool to help him rule and fight against other native beliefs. It was obvious that Orville was a better choice of secular ally, and he also gained some benefits to a certain extent.

In recent years, he found that the abilities he obtained from Jiuyos (sword) were becoming stronger and stronger. Now, in terms of encouragement (reducing intelligence) alone, he should have surpassed Tia and others. He reasonably suspected that the variable was his contribution to the spread of faith, or a bonus brought by the spread of faith itself.

(End of this chapter)