Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 46 Dealing with Prisoners
Their courage is indeed worthy of recognition, but using phalanx soldiers to attack the city is at least not worth promoting. These Macedonian infantry suffered heavy casualties, and before they could control the battering ram to reach the bottom of the city wall, they had to retreat to a safe position on the battlefield.

Later, the young king refused to believe it and organized several attacks from other locations on the city wall, all of which resulted in heavy losses and the morale of the troops basically collapsed.

Tia was afraid that something might go wrong, so she tried to get rid of the king. This incident could only be regarded as a minor episode.

"If the entire Greek kingdom is like this, I would feel relieved. At least the Roman garrison in Greece does not have to worry about encountering any risks. Those people do not understand the essence of Alexander's tactics at all. They just worship Alexander's statue." She commented on many of the current Greek monarchs with such disdain.
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The famine problem in the city soon became more and more serious, and many people began to go out of the city at night to find food, looking for anything that might be edible.

Tia sent several cavalry teams to patrol the valleys on both sides of the city and capture any Palfi people active in the valleys.

At first, only dozens of people were caught every night, but later the number quickly increased to two or three hundred, and now we can catch three or four hundred people every night.

The resettlement of these people was a big problem. The Romans' military food supply line was also under certain pressure. There was a certain distance from the coastline to here. There was not much food for tens of thousands of people and horses, and it was impossible to spare too many people to guard these refugees.

"For this reason, I suggest that all captured Palfi people be put to death. Crucifixion is the best solution for them."

Old Trajan was not afraid of Orville's opinion and spoke his mind directly. He believed that execution was the best and most realistic option.

Tia was not very emotionally accepting: "They are not soldiers, they are just a group of refugees."

"We can't guarantee that they are not spies and will not wait for an opportunity to start a riot in the military camp. We can't afford this risk. And although they don't have weapons now, they won't surrender to us Romans, right?"

"This is only because the rebels in the city only let those with property out to look for food. Once they surrender to us Romans, the rebels in the city will kill their families. Therefore, they dare not surrender to us. This is a helpless act forced upon them."

"No matter what the reasons or processes are, we only need to focus on the results. They won't surrender to us, and we don't have the ability to take in thousands more refugees. We can't just let them go, right? Wouldn't that increase the enemy's strength? Moreover, precisely because they didn't want to surrender, they fought desperately before being caught, causing a lot of casualties among our men. If we don't deal with them, it will be difficult to quell their resentment."

Old Trajan's words made sense, and Tia didn't know how to refute them. She glanced at Orville, signaling him to come up with a proper idea.

Orville is actually similar to Tia. He can't accept it emotionally, but he knows rationally that this is the best way.

"I agree to execute them, but I don't agree with crucifixion. This will only set an example for the Palfi people and give them the motivation to resist. After fighting for so long, you should have discovered that the rebels are not so afraid of death. Forcing them further will only stimulate their ferocity. Since these people are going to be executed, they should die worthily.

We can crucify the soldiers from Palphi, but at least we won't kill the civilians in front of us. We can just take them away, take them to the desert or somewhere far away from the city, kill them quietly, and bury them where they are, leaving no trace.

The city where the rebels are located is an isolated island, and they cannot get enough information from the outside world. We will turn around and claim that these refugees have surrendered to the Romans and are now heading to the safe zone in the north. At that time, these rebels will have to face a choice, either to kill the relatives of so many people, or to give up the pursuit of responsibility. The former will widen the rift between the two, while the latter will allow more people to join us unscrupulously. We can leave a few typical examples and really send them to the safe zone in the north. If anyone questions it later, let these people come back to testify. "

This idea is obviously more reliable than crucifying people, but some people still raised their opinions in a critical manner: "What if the people in the city still don't believe it and see through us and we are deceiving them?"

Orville continued to answer: "First of all, I don't think those gangsters have such a brain. If they find something wrong, they can just take advantage of it.

The defenders are well fed and can think rationally, but the civilians below are starving and have no time to think. They will become impatient, blind, and lose their minds. We just need to add fuel to the fire. The city will soon become an erupting volcano, and we will enter the city as the savior."

Orville knew that unless he was possessed by Zeus or Jupiter, kicked open the city wall and created a lightning bolt to strike through the temple, he would not be able to save everyone. He would have to try another method and sacrifice as few people as possible to save as many people as possible.

Every additional day the siege continues will result in more deaths. If we want to end this disaster as soon as possible, we must end the war as soon as possible, and there will definitely be casualties.

The picture Orville painted convinced everyone, including Tia. She didn't want to cause more deaths, but she didn't want anyone to die either, which was the idea of ​​a woman who had never been to the battlefield.

She decided to adopt Orville's plan, and everyone began to make arrangements accordingly.
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The cavalry teams personally escorted the refugees to a sandy area outside the city, where they killed most of the refugees themselves and buried them in the sand without anyone noticing.

This was considered to have calmed the soldiers' resentment, and the Roman army then claimed that it had released all the refugees and allowed them to return to the safe area in the north.

The pressure came to the rebels, and they finally chose stability. They killed most of the relatives of the "traitors" and took away their little remaining wealth and food.

The situation in the city was now very bad. They no longer had the energy to bury the bodies of those who had died of starvation and disease. They could only hastily throw the bodies off the city wall and leave them to rot in broad daylight.

This was a huge blow to morale, but the defenders had no other choice: either morale or stability.

Just as Orville was about to implement the next plan, an accident suddenly occurred.

The army spent nearly three weeks filling the ditch, and then built an earthen embankment in front of the city wall step by step. But at noon one day, when the earthen embankment was about to be completed and they were preparing to use battering rams and catapults to launch a full-scale attack, the earthen embankment began to collapse.

During this time, the Parfi people dug a tunnel, quietly came under the earthen embankment, and hollowed out the soil underneath the embankment without anyone noticing, leaving only a few pieces of wood supporting the huge fortification.

(End of this chapter)