Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 87 Gaul Situation
In the end, Orville was still unwilling to believe it and looked for a few days, but he still couldn't find any suitable talents. He had to give up recruiting staff and he only kept the unlucky "goblin".

After all, the other party's ability is quite useful among dwarfs, and his management ability is not bad either, which may come in handy in the future, so he kept him by his side as a guard, which can also be regarded as a job for him to make a living.

This matter did not affect him. He quickly began to prepare to raise weapons and equipment for the soldiers. The dozen or so blacksmiths he had were good at maintaining the equipment, but it would be exhausting for them to fight against one or two thousand people. He could only rely on buying equipment.

Since the war mobilization had begun, several weapons factories in Rome began to operate at high capacity. At this time, his royal status came in handy again. He could cut in line a little and get a friendly price, and others would give him face.

After all, it is the capital of the empire, so there are still one or two thousand sets of armor in stock. Orville bought 1,500 sets of chain mail and corresponding legion infantry weapons and equipment in one go, which can be regarded as meeting the equipment needs of all these people.

Shopping is a very pleasant thing, but the price is also obvious - Orville fell into a state of "poverty" overnight. The money that he originally thought should be enough was no longer enough because of the price increase of weapons and equipment. He had to borrow some money from Tia to barely fill the hole. He didn't know how to solve the problem of the soldiers' salaries for the time being, and the cash he had was only enough for three months.

However, he was very sure of one thing: having soldiers could create wealth, but having wealth did not necessarily create soldiers. He did not know when he would have to go to war in the future, so he would not be frugal in military affairs. At most, he would go to Vespa or the Herod family to borrow money. At least he had to maintain two battalions of 1,200 elite infantry, and count the 500 Parphi people, and then find a way to gather 2,000 people to follow him to the battlefield.

It would be a waste if we don't make full use of Rome, a high-quality source of soldiers, now. We don't know when the next opportunity to freely recruit soldiers in Rome will be, so we must cherish the opportunity.

Basically, he recruited veterans who were not too old in their thirties or forties, or new recruits with very good qualities. There was no need to worry too much about their training. Just give them a few months and they would be almost in shape, and he could just let his subordinates train the army step by step.
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One day more than half a month later, Orville was sitting opposite Tia, both of them were concentrating on reading a book about Gaul.

The two of them have a lot in common in this regard. They need to do sufficient preparation before fighting and fully understand the tactics, history, culture and advantages of the Gauls before they can better target them. Now the two of them are doing this and catching up on relevant knowledge.

Tia also showed this habit during the Palphic War. During the more than a year of fighting, she basically read and understood the most essential part of the Palphic culture, that is, their laws. Now she is doing similar things to the Gauls.

As for Orville, he is only trying to gain a comprehensive understanding of the abstract history of Gaul in this world. The works of historians in the classical era have many flaws, such as exaggeration, piling up words, and looking at issues with a standpoint, etc., but it is more than enough to have a basic understanding of the world line.

First and foremost, the belief in the "Eternal" or monotheism is more popular in this world, and there are many Gauls who believe in this. Of course, in terms of numbers, there are still many more people who believe in the native mythology of Gaul.

During this period, the Roman Empire's beliefs were also quite chaotic, and even among the upper echelons of the empire there were many who believed in monotheism or were very sympathetic to monotheism, such as Poppaea, the favorite mistress of the late Emperor Nero, and the niece and niece-in-law of Domitian (Domitia) in the original world line. Rome had a more flexible bottom line in this regard. Although it promised freedom of belief, the upper echelons, especially the royal family, could not abandon the Roman gods, otherwise they would be at risk of being framed, exiled or even executed. At the same time, the policy towards foreign gods was actually a bit overbearing if you look deeper.

They could choose to accept or not accept gods from foreign tribes, but except for those who were pardoned, such as the monotheistic Parvi people, conquered nations sometimes could not refuse to accept the Roman gods.

Although the Romans recognized that the conquered peoples could have their own beliefs and allowed them to have some of their own cultural customs, the logic was this.

"Your XXX god is our Roman XXX god, so from now on, worshiping our Roman god will have the same effect as worshiping your own god. Worship ours."

Because of this policy, people in later generations didn't even know the names of the gods that the Gauls really believed in. The Romans assumed that the Gauls' ancestral god was Hades, and that the Gauls generally believed in Hermes (Mercury). What the real Gallic gods were like has long been forgotten in later history. Even now, after years of Roman occupation, many Gauls have begun to forget.

In Orville's view, this is a cultural assimilation policy of boiling a frog in warm water. Now the southernmost province of Narbonne Gaul is the boiled frog. Roman Latin culture has already prevailed. If the other Gallic provinces are given a few hundred years, the people here will become Romans culturally instead of continuing to be Gauls.

Perhaps it was people with insight who saw the risk, perhaps it was ambitious people who saw the fluctuations in Rome's power and chose to take advantage of the situation, or perhaps it was simply because the recent increase in taxes imposed by the empire and the corrupt local governors made it impossible for the locals to survive, which led to the Gallic uprising.

Apart from the occasional underperformance, the ethnic groups in this land have always been relatively stable, which is a tough nut to crack. Caesar's conquest of Gaul was also fraught with danger and he almost failed many times. He himself was also frightened by it, as can be seen from his attitude towards the enemy leaders.

Caesar was always known for his magnanimity. He was very generous to civilians and his subordinates, political enemies, conquered nations, and even those who rebelled against him. The only exception was his treatment of Vercingetorix, the leader of the Gallic uprising. Caesar executed him directly after the triumphal ceremony. It was rare in his life that he was afraid of one person.

Just as Orville and Tia were reading with their heads covered, pondering the key points of the war against Gaul, the guards standing outside the room came in and informed them of a piece of news from the port of Ostia.

Ptolemy Auretes "the Flute Player", the king of Ptolemaic Egypt, died of old age and frailty. An envoy carrying his will came all the way from Alexandria to explain the situation to the Roman emperor and ask the emperor to ensure the execution of the will.

(End of this chapter)