Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 48 Gallic Wars Power Up Edition

After making sure Tia understood the Parthians' plan, she soon had a new idea.

"Inspired by Caesar's conquest of Gaul, I thought we needed to build a wall, a wall that was tall enough."

She planned to surround the holy city with a wall to completely prevent the defenders from rushing out of the city. Caesar used this method to conquer Gaul with remarkable results.

But there are problems. At that time, Caesar besieged a mountain stronghold and trapped the garrison inside, but now they need to besiege a big city. The technical difficulty of the two is incomparable. However, despite this, most officers still agreed with Tia's plan.

They were also annoyed by the Parvi people's day-to-day attacks, and since there was a precedent of Caesar, everything was easy to deal with. Although not as mad as the Greeks' worship of Alexander, the Romans generally believed that Caesar would not make mistakes, and the tactics he had used were absolutely reasonable.

After confirming the next stage's goal, these soldiers burst into unprecedented enthusiasm. No matter they were legionaries or Luo Xie's army, everyone took action and rushed to participate in the project. Legions and battalions competed with each other. Tia would ride on horseback to check the progress of the construction several times a day. Orville took out some of the money left by Vespa and distributed it to the most outstanding soldiers of the day.

After encountering setbacks, some armies will lose their fighting spirit, while others will become more courageous. These people are undoubtedly the latter. In addition to being well trained, they have accumulated strong hatred for the defenders in the city during the war, which is also a strong motivation.

The wooden wall, nearly eight kilometers long and reinforced with thirteen fortresses, was built in four days. Even the Romans themselves were amazed at the speed of construction.

Orville also found it hard to believe this speed, but it was still one day slower than in history. It can only be said that each Roman had a civil engineering superman.

Although they are called city walls, in fact the Romans did not expect to rely on wood to keep out tens of thousands of enemies. They only used wooden walls to block the enemy's actions. The defense mainly relied on these fortresses.

Even if a few people managed to break through the wooden wall defense line and escape, they still could not change their isolated and helpless situation. Without an organized cavalry unit, they would soon be wiped out on the open plain.

Regardless of the actual effect of these walls, the morale of the defenders was indeed hit, and the morale of the attackers was also restored. Being on duty in the camp gave them a strong sense of security.

After the wall was built, Orville began his next plan.

He called on some crossbows and began throwing cloth bags filled with a small amount of food into the city. The bags were mixed with some stones as counterweights to ensure that they could be thrown into the urban area behind the city wall by the crossbows.

Then he began to have people on horseback march around the city walls, loudly announcing the event.

The Romans already knew that there was a famine in the city, but at the same time they believed that the civilians in the city were innocent and should not starve to death, so they threw food into the city. This was the Romans' relief to the civilians in the city, and they hoped that the civilians could accept it.

Whether the logic of this statement is correct is debatable, but what the civilians saw was food falling from the sky. No matter what they thought in their hearts, no one would refuse food that was in front of their mouths.

This brings up another problem - many defenders are also not getting enough food, so they will rob civilians of their food. When faced with a food like wheat that is almost extinct in the city, they will definitely become covetous and try to snatch it.

It is of course difficult for civilians to accept that their life-saving food was taken away, especially when the food was specifically requested by name. Right now, for civilians, the most acute contradiction has changed from ethnic contradiction to military-civilian contradiction, and the opposition is very obvious, which is definitely not a good sign.

John Levi and Bar Giola were obviously not fans of the idea of ​​military and civilians being one family, but they also clearly felt that the wind direction in the city was not right recently. They could not let the Romans use divisive tactics like this, but they had no good solution after all.

Generally speaking, even professional armies cannot eliminate robbery and extortion, let alone these bandit soldiers. They are used to robbery and bullying in the past, and it is impossible for the leaders to correct them with a few words. Objectively, they are also trying to ease the relationship between the army and the people, and even opened up some grain in the granaries for the lower-class civilians to share, but it cannot fundamentally solve the problem.

The relationship between the military and civilians deteriorated with each day the siege continued. John Levi and Bar Giora were not as good as Tia in this regard. When there was famine in the city, they still had wine stored in the cellars of the temple and the palace to enjoy. It was said that some people could drink five or six liters of wine at a time.

At this time, the priest party in the city also felt that something was wrong and decided to contact Orville in advance.
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In Tia's tent, Orville was reading a letter to her.

"No other city has ever suffered such a tragedy, no generation has ever produced such evil, these bandits have brought shame upon an entire race, they have revealed their true selves in their daily lives, they are the dregs of society, bastards and scum, and garbage that should be expelled. These are the people who destroyed our city, and although the Romans were the attackers, they seemed to think that the Temple was burning too slowly.

They will not shed a tear as they sit and watch the temple burn."

The essays, which were several hundred words long, were all about accusations, accusing the Zealots and the Daggers of their lack of conscience. After reading them, Orville and Tia's expressions were quite dull, and it was obvious that they were not aroused.

Previously, the priest party had been waiting for a good price, and they did not like such people.

"So, they are ready to surrender?"

"Rather than surrendering, it's more like they're willing to help us capture the Antonine Wall. This way we can go all the way to the temple. Once we take the temple, we basically have control of the entire city."

"When?"

"We need to create opportunities for them, and they will act accordingly. I have also made preparations in this regard. My personal suggestion is to act as soon as possible to avoid unnecessary casualties."

"I thought so too."

Tia was very mobile and immediately stood up and prepared to walk out of the tent to assemble the troops.

"Wait, take this with you." Before leaving, Orville stopped her, threw her a roll of gauze, and told her to wrap it around her arm.

"But I don't have any flesh wounds anymore, it's just that the bones haven't healed yet." Tia was puzzled. Gauze couldn't heal bones.

"Just follow my instructions. This is called acting." Orville insisted on asking the other party to take it with him, and Tia had no choice but to do so.

After wrapping the gauze around her, Tia came out of the tent and immediately began to organize the entire army. Twenty elite men were selected from each hundred-man team to form a vanguard team, who would help her capture the city tonight.

She rode on horseback, reviewed the high-spirited troops, and began to give a speech to boost morale.

In addition to verbal encouragement, Tia also promised promotions and bonuses, and pledged to provide generous pensions to all those who died in the war, and that she would also participate in the operation.

(End of this chapter)