Rise of Rurik - Chapter 1007

[Chapter 1009 The Welfare of King Ross]

Once, the settlements of Münster and Osbrunnak belonged to the Saxon region.

Also includes the whole of Westphalia, which is part of traditional Saxony.

After the war, these areas were devastated, and those Saxon people who were able to flee had already crossed the Weser River and even the Elbe River.

Liudoff gave up a full half of traditional Saxony, but gained the vast majority of the Saxon population.

Now that he has suffered a great loss in strength, he has to cooperate with the Ross people to obtain military protection.

The large-scale reduction of the territory is only temporary, and he constantly comforts himself: “Everyone is in my hands, and it is easy for me to manage them. When my strength recovers, I will get more territories.”

Like his bloodline, Lyudov’s family is not content to be a hound with a collar around its neck.

The lost Westphalia will eventually be reclaimed, and at that time the Archdiocese of Cologne will be able to cooperate with itself.

“Maybe my Duchy of Saxony can expand as much as possible. As long as I don’t harm the interests of the Normans, as long as I continue to cooperate with them, my expansion will also get their support. Maybe, my family can replace Ludwig family.”

Such unreasonable ambitions should not be told to others, Liudov was very tight-lipped.

Why revenge?

Merely killing an enemy is not revenge.

The so-called killing and punishing the heart, if you can still seize all the political power of the enemy, this is the most thorough revenge.

Continue to declare that de jure submission to Ludwig is a conspiracy and that no one is to blame.

The Principality of Saxony is still a political sector in the huge East Frankish territory, and Liudorf has become one of the few powerful nobles!

Today, how many great nobles are there in East Frankish jurisprudence?

The Duke of Bavaria (also in charge of Austria in a broad sense), this is Ludwig’s basic plan as a king, and his original identity was the Duke of Bavaria.

Followed by: Duke of Saxony, Earl of Leingau (Marquis of Frankfurt), Archbishop of Worms, Archbishop of Cologne, Marquis of Thuringia, Count of Flanders.

If it is inevitable that the decline of royal power in Germany entered into the historical process of electors competing for the title of emperor, then the root of all this existed when she was still in the Eastern Kingdom.

In the large-scale war in the north that finally ended in 840, among the “vassal entities” in the Eastern Kingdom, only the Marquis of Thuringia suffered no losses.

Of course Taschov, the Burg or Marquis of Thuringia, received Ludwig’s order to send troops, and he made it clear to the messenger that he would indeed send troops.

However, until Ludwig’s entire army was wiped out, half of the Thuringian reinforcements were not seen.

Even the Marquis of Thuringia borders the Saxony region.

This war can be said to be an unprecedented large-scale invasion of the Eastern Kingdom against the Normans, and it can also be said to be the restoration war of the traditional nobles of Saxony.

The war finally came to an end, and Ludwig hoped that the war would end before Christmas, and his hope was fully realized in this black humorous way.

The Eastern Kingdom is defeated!

The victor gave the vanquished a very honorable end.

Therefore, when the peace treaty written on hard paper was signed, it meant that the “Northern Alliance” and the Eastern Kingdom had become a virtual military and commercial alliance.

Most of the contents of the treaty are supported by everyone, even including the cancellation of all taxation rights of the “Northern Alliance” member states by the Eastern Kingdom.

There is only one, the two sides have gone through a lot of mediation and finally reached a compromise.

With the Great Wall of Schleswig as the boundary, the northerners will not spread the belief in Odin to the south, and the southerners will not spread the belief in God like the north.

Ludwig, who was forced to dress plainly, put on his gorgeous clothes again and took back his sword.

So it wasn’t until he was defeated that he realized that the sword he had cherished for many years was originally a sword tailored for him by King Rurik of Ross.

Then in the Ross army, Ludwig even met Kawei, the son of the sword maker and the great blacksmith of Ross.

It’s fate in the dark, and when you look at the sword in your hand, it’s really mixed.

“Maybe I was a little less arrogant back then and had a good talk with your envoy. Is it possible that the situation is still like this?”

Now that they are allies, the Frankish civilians who were detained in Hamburg all regained their freedom.

These civilians have almost lost the courage to curse and curse, and now, any man among them who can hold a spear and an ax becomes Ludwig’s guards, so as to support the king’s face.

In principle, Ludwig and Harderbold could leave after the meeting, which they did not do.

They are going to spend Christmas in Hamburg, and they have to pay more attention to observing the living conditions of the Normans and their barbaric holiday etiquette.

After a wooden tower is piled up, the bottom of it is solid. The higher the wooden tower is, the more it converges, and finally it converges into a courtyard equivalent to a square of one meter.

This courtyard is intentionally made, using the so-called chimney effect. After the fire is ignited, the wooden tower will spew violent tongues of fire into the sky, and the scene is extremely spectacular.

The wooden towers are stacked on top of each other with a slight mortise and tenon structure, which makes it very strong.

There are a lot of pine branches piled up on the outside of the wooden tower, and the boiled fish oil can be poured on it. The oil has been frozen under the extreme cold and mixed with the pine branches.

Only one part of the wooden tower is bare, and the continuous accumulation of wood forms a ladder, which leads directly to the top of the tower.

What’s the point of building a tower like this, the existence that looks like a ladder is really a ladder?

An amusing and wild piece of news is circulating in the Ross army.

Legend has it that during the fire tower ceremony of Hanukkah, the sacrifices will be tied up and transported to the top of the tower by soldiers, where they will be completely burned to ashes.

That sacrifice was none other than Horik, the deposed king of Denmark, careerist, and war instigator who turned into a human pig.

To this day, this man is still dying.

Having been stripped of his tongue, he now even lost the ability to bite his tongue to end the humiliation of the wooden cage.

Burning Horick was the wish of all the Normans, and, of course, Baudouin, Earl of Flanders, was extremely pleased.

In addition to burning a prisoner, residents in Hamburg, regardless of ethnicity, are welcoming the grand festival according to their own living habits.

Eskil and Harderbold joined forces for the historic church in Hamburg and decided to make a reasonable Christmas High Mass.

To this end, all Christians, including the Saxons and the freed Franks, must come to participate.

Even Blue Fox, Earl of Gothenburg who belongs to the Rose camp, and Regalaf, the actual eldest son of Rurik who has the legal kingship of Mercia.

Even though the two would prefer to participate in Ross’s traditional activities, attending Catholic Mass is necessary for political purposes.

But before the festival, one important thing must be done.

The snow had stopped in the cold days, and the horns of the Ross Barracks and the Danish Barracks were loud.

Ludwig woke up in his sleep, subconsciously thinking of the terrible war and his humiliating defeat.

He was so frightened that he was sweating, and only after he woke up did he realize that he was sleeping in Hamburg and the war was over.

The low and melodious Norman Horn seemed to come from another world. It was an exciting signal. The soldiers who had received the news a long time ago woke up one after another.

The various banner formations now also include the soldiers of the Blue Fox’s Gothenburg Gotaland-Onclaes Army and the Ragnar’s Danish Army soldiers.

Thousands of people gathered to whisper, joined by armed sailors, and everyone discussed among themselves the special benefits that King Rurik was about to bestow.

No!

The much-anticipated Ross King Rurik, dressed in extremely gorgeous attire, appeared on the stage surrounded by bear-headed berserkers who were also luxuriously dressed but still brave.

Rurik tried his best to suppress the roar of a thousand people with his sonorous voice.

“Don’t make noise! Everyone has a half-pound silver coin! Regardless of ethnicity, everyone who has fought a war has a share!”

He kept shouting so that his voice was a little hoarse.

Forget it, it was the turn of the bear-headed berserkers to fiddle with rolls of cardboard to make simple trumpets, repeating the words of the king to the swarming brothers.

With the captains and nobles of each banner in place, Rurik ordered them to form a team immediately, and he also hurriedly prepared the money distribution platform.

The Berserker himself hauled some sledges stacked with heavy sacks, full of silver coins as expected.

The simple wooden table was quickly assembled, and a wooden chair was also assembled.

Rurik sat alone on the wooden chair, and the guards around him prepared the money bag.

He intentionally took out some silver coins and spread them out on the wooden table. The silver-white treasure was here, and the eyes of the viewers were straightened. This also proved that the king really has a lot of money and is willing to reward the army.

He purposely put on a show, and it happened that those Le girls trained by his beloved wife Noren have always been doing handymen in the army. They also serve as cooks, nurses, and washers, and their jobs are Le girls.

They played melodious tunes with bone flutes and wooden flutes, and played a special symphony with horn horns, leather drums and gongs.

From this piece of music, the money-distributing drama that the king personally implemented was officially opened.

To send money to thousands of people, Rurik naturally made some preparations in advance.

Those huge linen pockets were filled with a bunch of pockets, and fifty silver coins were packed in the simply sewn pockets, which were tied with a thin twine at the end.

In a sense, this became a New Year’s red envelope given by Rurik to the soldiers.

At the end of the music, facing the very quiet scene where thousands of people gathered, Rurik’s shout finally had full penetrating power.

“First flag team! Brothers, come and receive the reward!”

“In the order of each centurion! Receive the reward!”

As a result, a small team walked out in front of Rurik’s desk in a single file.

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Rurik was sitting here, the first soldier couldn’t hide his smile while being cautious, he was trembling with excitement, and after taking the simple small bag given by the king himself with trembling hands, he subconsciously jumped to the half.

However, this reckless warrior was immediately stopped by the bear-headed berserker with his sword.

“Wait! Brother! Don’t thank the king? Also, don’t show the rewards you have received to other brothers?” The soldier accused.

Hearing this, the soldier couldn’t hide his smile, and immediately stood in front of the king and beat his chest with his right fist in a warrior salute, tearing his throat and shouting: “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

That’s all, he tore off the rope at the mouth of the beam, and there were neatly stacked silver coins inside.

He was also embarrassed whether the list really weighed fifty and a half pounds, and immediately shouted to the waiting comrades: “It’s really silver coins!”

In this way, Rurik handed over the prepared bags one by one to the subordinates who received the reward, and the soldiers immediately shouted “Thank you, king”, and then pulled the rope to inspect the goods before leaving in ecstasy.

This is a performance art of unprecedented scale, and Rurik will personally hand over the reward to all his subordinates, even if it will make him very tired.

He is now acting extremely indifferent, and to many warriors, the noble King Ross is as mysterious as a god.

It is rare for a mortal to have a chance to speak to the king in this life, even to see the king is extremely rare.

Especially the Finnish flag team and the Slavic flag team, they are not and impossible to become the king’s trusted fighters, wanting to see the king’s face up close and get rewards from the king with their own hands, I am afraid this is the only chance in their lives.

The diminutive Finnish Suomi, who tried to challenge the Rus army many years ago, surrendered immediately after realizing they couldn’t fight.

The Suomi became the most prosperous of all Finnish tribes, not because of their smooth surrender, but mainly because the king’s confidant Jeflo was a Suomi.

Among the Finnish banners sent to war were playful miniature tribes such as the Vips and Rudi, who lived like wild animals until they were conquered.

They were pulled into a northern civilization system created by Ross. They were extremely poor and had already enjoyed the dividends of war. This time, they were personally rewarded by King Ross in an unprecedented way.

After receiving the silver coins, a short soldier sat down on the ground because he was too excited to stand on his legs, and then stammered “Thank you, king” in Norse.

Subconsciously, Rurik stretched out half of his body and sat down on the ground. With the gentleness of a king, he asked in Suomi dialect: “Are you okay? Take the money and make way for the brothers behind.”

This is the local dialect!

The king can speak his native language!

The paralyzed Suomi warrior was finally dragged aside by the bear-headed berserker. This kind of over-excited person became a joke among the onlookers, and the warrior was even more happy that the king attached great importance to the ordinary Suomi longbowman.

Rurik really showed a strong regard for all the soldiers who have survived the war.

For the Kingdom of Ross, which has already poured in a lot of hot money, giving fifty silver coins to the Viking soldiers in the kingdom cannot change a family, but it is definitely a huge sum of money.

But for Finnish soldiers and Slavic soldiers, it will bring about a qualitative change.

After capturing female captives, giving Viking warriors as wives was a benefit that Rurik had thought of very early on, and he won a large number of fans by relying on this trick.

This benefit was soon extended to the Slavic villages in the Novgorod region who surrendered to Rus, but the act of plundering women through war and giving them wives to subordinates was only a temporary measure at a special historical stage.

They are men, and capable men go after wives themselves and cannot expect the king to send them.

Counting on pure love is an extravagant hope. If a talented man can come up with a dowry, the marriage problem will probably be solved.

Especially the Slavs of Novgorod, who live purely in agriculture and live around Lake Yinlmen. From their culture, women are only subordinates of the family, and parents have full power over their daughter’s marriage arrangements.

Although there is no clear clan culture, small Slavic families through continuous marriages have led to the rise of farms one by one. There are intertwined blood relationships in the farms, and this marriage model continues, and multiple small farms can be merged into large farms. , and its final derived state is the city-state.

A Slavic man rarely sees silver coins in traditional life, even iron objects are rare.

Nowadays, silver coins are widely used in Yin Ermen Lake’s trade system, but fifty silver coins are enough as a dowry to get a marriage.

Many soldiers in the Slavic flag team are young and unmarried. They are the second and third sons of the family, and most of them are not the main labor force.

In this way, they died in battle, and the loss to their own families was not fatal.

The battle damage of the banner team was extremely small. After a whole year of war, the young soldiers not only realized the size of the world, they had already plundered some loot, and their shriveled pockets were bulging. currency.

This means that when they return to their hometown after the war, the young Slavic warriors can marry wives immediately, buy some tools to cultivate the wasteland, and hire labor to help them build new woodcuts.

Because of the order of the king, this year’s tax will be canceled due to the victory of the war. Now that the tax has been collected, next year’s agricultural tax will be completely exempted.

There is a one-year tax-free period for land reclamation. Even if taxes start to be collected, all newly reclaimed land will be considered “poor land” by default, and the agricultural tax collection is also extremely low.

As for whether it can be defined as “good land” to increase the tax rate, it depends on the future land survey and determination.

Young Slavic soldiers enjoy the dividends of war. They can be self-cultivated farmers, and then gather together to form a farm, just like the city of Mstisk and Youth City near Novgorod that has been built, so that the army and the people are all loyal to the royal family of Rus.

Now, they see with their own eyes that their king is also a young man like themselves. This is no longer a distant view. Everyone can clearly see the king’s beard and sharp eyes, and even touch the king’s hand when receiving the money bag. .

Even though Rurik wanted to do the whole money distribution activity quickly, it still continued into the night, after all, the daylight hours are too short now.

The enthusiasm of the soldiers remained undiminished. They lit the bonfire and held the torches. Rurik also held back his yawn and continued to distribute the money he had prepared.

By the way, take this opportunity to determine the number of troops that can directly follow your command.

The fact is, even counting the sailors, there are only over 4,000 fighting men left.

It was no longer the passing of horses reviewing the army, Rurik saw the faces of every soldier, and had the most real understanding of their tall, short, fat, and thin.

Obviously, there are not many faces of Ross’s veterans. After all, no matter how powerful the veterans are, they will naturally fight the hardest battles.

Because of the shackles derived from a large number of veterans, the old Ross tribe will be worn away by the sacrifices of veterans.

A large number of screaming recruits were added, and in their childhood before becoming soldiers, the recruits ate the king’s food and wore the king’s clothes, and the king sent people to educate them on cultural knowledge and combat skills.

It is self-evident to whom they will be loyal.

This war reshuffled the political structure of Northern Europe and Northwest Europe, and it also reshuffled the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Ross.

The younger generation emerges and will quickly replace the older generation. This is exactly what Rurik wants to see, and everything is under his control.

[End of this Chapter]